


Valerian

by Lomonaaeren



Series: Valerian [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Heavy Angst, M/M, Past Infidelity, Psychological Torture, Weddings, past harry/draco
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-17
Updated: 2019-08-03
Packaged: 2019-08-03 17:22:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 24,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16330352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: Harry dated Draco until Draco fell in love with Astoria, and never really got over his broken heart. Now Draco is getting married, and wants Harry to construct a unique magical gift for his bride on the grounds of Malfoy Manor. As Harry labors on his creation, telling himself not to be petty, Severus Snape watches to make sure that he doesn’t mess it up—and also, soon, for other reasons.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Several people are angsty and not at their nicest here. Don’t read if that bothers you. Also, this is a sequel to my short fic “Aconite,” which you should probably read first, and while this will be much longer than that story, it will be irregularly updated.

****Harry had left the letter lying on the table like a poisonous snake long enough.

He could hear Draco’s voice in his head correcting him as he picked it up and tore off the heavy gold seal that hung by a glittering thread. _Venomous. Venomous snake. You say that, not poisonous._

Harry sighed. They had always wanted each other to be something they weren’t. He scanned the letter carefully.

_Dear Potter Enterprises,_

_I’m sorry, Harry. I can’t write to you as if you were a stranger or some kind of_ business owner, _when I know exactly how much effort you put into your creations, and don’t. And although you were never kind to me, I hope you can find the strength in you to forget about your mistakes and move on to the future._

 _Astoria and I will be getting married in three months. It’s a tradition in the Malfoy family to gift our_ brides _with something beautiful and long-lasting, a magical object or plant or animal or spell. Father made Mother a present of the white peacocks in our gardens. When they gather in the moonlight, their feathers shine and a whisper of her name arises. I want to do something even better for Astoria, as our love will outshine my parents’._

 _I want to make a maze for her. Each turning will show my heart to her, some aspect of my love for her, with the greatest proof at the heart. She’s a soft and retiring woman, so bloody or violent displays won’t be appropriate, or noisy ones. I want this to be a marvel of beauty and delicacy. Your finest magic will be required for this creation, and_ no _hostility towards Astoria._

_I chose you for this for your skill, and because I know that you’re too noble to hurt Astoria on purpose, and because you would truly want to make me happy._

_Looking forward to hearing from you soon, Potter._  
  
_Draco Malfoy._

Harry closed his eyes and did his best to feel nothing while his heart slowly healed from the scores the letter had inflicted on it. He had mostly got over his obsession, his infatuation, with Draco. And infatuation had been all it was, despite how intensely Harry had felt it at the time. Draco had proved that to him when he fell in love with Astoria and showed Harry what the _real_ emotion was like.

Harry had come to believe, in the years since, that some people could feel that and some people couldn’t, and he was one of the unlucky ones. Maybe it had something to do with growing up without his parents.

Harry sighed and studied the letter again. Draco didn’t realize how hurtful he was being. He only wanted the best gift for his bride, and he trusted Harry to make it.

It was a trust Harry had no choice but to answer. At least he would get a lot of Galleons out of Draco.

He wrote a letter back with his price, and watched it wing into the sunset. He half-hoped the number would make Draco back away, or at least look for something less expensive for his marriage.

*

It didn’t, and now Harry was standing beside the massive gates that closed off the front of Malfoy Manor, staring through them at the gleaming building.

He’d been in there. He’d made love with Draco on green sheets in one of the bedrooms that Draco said no one but his distant ancestors had ever used, but that the house-elves kept spotlessly dusted. Their faces had flushed and Draco had laughed at his excitement and Harry had said—Harry had said—

He couldn’t remember.

The point was, that was _over_ now.

Harry raised his wand and cast a spell that would make the gates reverberate with the sound of a knock and alert the elves. He knew better than to touch the metal, after what had happened the last time he and Draco spoke in the Manor.

A second later, an elf that Harry didn’t recognize popped up in front of him and regarded him doubtfully. “Master Harry Potter is waiting until Filly has authorization,” she said, and popped away again.

Harry waited. It was a cloudy day, and he hoped it didn’t rain. His hair would draggle and drip over his face if it did.

_And what do you care? It’s not like you’re ever going to try and impress Draco with your handsomeness again._

He put his thoughts away in a hurry, and was rewarded when the gates opened and the figure who walked down the gleaming white pathway towards him was Astoria, not Draco. Harry bowed because he knew she would expect it, and to give him a chance to get his face straight before he lifted his head.

Astoria was giving him much the same doubtful look as Filly by the time he looked her in the eye. “Well, Draco did say that he wanted you here,” she murmured. She had a delicate shrug, just like her delicate facial features and delicate green eyes and delicate golden hair bound up on her head in an elaborate style. “Come with me. Draco is in the gardens.” She turned and walked away, her impossibly high-heeled, silver shoes tapping away on the path.

Harry followed her, watching the white gravel of the path and the way her silver heels twinkled and flashed. His stomach was dancing. He watched the light so that he wouldn’t throw up.

In a few minutes, he would be seeing Draco again.

The gravel path led through another set of gates that Harry didn’t remember into the enormous back garden. There were two white peacocks strutting around in sight, but Harry didn’t look for others. His gaze was on the chair, shaded by a parasol, where Draco sat with his arms folded behind his head.

His chest was so defined under his robes. His hair shone like the peacocks’ feathers, brighter than Astoria’s shoes. He tilted his head back lazily, and Harry traced the perfect shape of his cheekbones with longing eyes.

“Hello, Potter.”

The voice was as he remembered, all the harmonics of his fantasies, except that Draco was always calling him _Harry_ in his fantasies. Harry inclined his head. “Hello, Malfoy. I hope that you’ve been well.”

Draco tilted his head to the side and gave him a look of unmistakable pity. “You can’t wish me that well, Potter. Don’t try.”

Harry did. He loved Draco as much as he was capable of. He still hadn’t managed to move on from him to the point of taking another lover. But he just straightened up and said, “Of course,” as Astoria went to stand behind Draco’s chair. Draco reached up and captured her hand, smiling into her face with a brilliance that made Harry’s arms ache as if someone had hit him with a Muggle car.

“Still as rude as ever, I see, Potter.”

Harry blinked and turned away from Draco and Astoria. It was strange, but that voice seemed to reach into the ether where he was floating and drag him back to the ground. “Hello, Professor.”

“It’s been years since I’ve been a professor at Hogwarts.” Snape’s eyes were narrowed, and despite the fact that he wore a set of tailored, pale blue robes that matched Draco’s except for the color, he looked familiar. “‘Sir’ will do. I understand that you’re here to create a gift for Draco and Astoria’s wedding.”

“Yes, sir.”

Snape sighed and put down his glass of something white and bubbly on a table, getting to his feet. “And I’m here to make sure that you don’t kill yourself while you do it.”

Harry felt a surge of hope for a second, but then he understood. It wasn’t that Draco wanted him to be well. It was that he wanted to make sure Harry bloody Potter didn’t die on his property and get the papers interested in him. Harry bit his lip until he was sure it would bleed. The pain surged through him and calmed him down. He nodded. “Yes, sir.”

Snape stared at him, as if he didn’t know what to do with a Harry who wasn’t protesting about the way people treated him, but Harry only turned back to Draco. “Where is the ground that you want me to make into the maze?”

Draco waved a hand. “Severus will show you.”

 _Of course._ Draco didn’t want to spend even that much time with him. Then again, Harry had made him _hurt_. Harry nodded and turned to Snape, who sneered and led him away rapidly in the direction of a large, green piece of the gardens that didn’t appear to have many flowerbeds.

Harry swallowed and focused his attention on the work. When he waved his hand, a piece of parchment appeared next to him. It was the contract he and Draco had signed, with some numbers already filled in and other spaces left blank for the parameters Harry couldn’t measure until he got there.

Now that he _was_ here, he began to cast the spells that would tell him everything from the composition of the soil to the usual weather here, and he fell into the work. He would have to, to keep himself from cringing and sniveling when he saw Astoria.

*

Severus stared at Potter’s hunched back, and felt as if someone had punched him in the ear.

Draco had described the way Potter had acted when they broke up. He had said the man had “somehow” been devastated, as if he hadn’t ignored obvious signs that Draco was sleeping with Astoria for years before he officially broke it off with Potter. He’d said that Potter was a begging mess, and Draco had been afraid of him. Potter had powerful magic, after all, and no idea what love was really like. That had been one reason he’d wanted Severus here, to make sure that Potter didn’t harm Draco or Astoria with that magic.

But this man…

Was nothing like the boy Severus had known, was nothing like the man Draco had described, was nothing like the man the papers still sometimes talked about when they got bored enough.

He was _contained_. Once he concentrated on the work in front of him, and began to weave the spells that apparently told him vital information about the place that Severus couldn’t even guess at, Severus couldn’t feel a trace of his magical signature. Most wizards projected it beyond their bodies in a constant, obvious hum. Learning to listen for it was one reason Severus had been able to catch students out of their beds so often.

But there was nothing here. If it wasn’t for the visible trails of light in the air around him, Potter would have looked like a Muggle.

He also had a blank face that ill-suited the brash Gryffindor Severus remembered, or the passionate, draining lover that Draco did. He nodded when Severus asked him a question and said, “Yes, sir,” a few times to answer one, without hearing his own answers, that was obvious. It was as if he had set up a door against the world and sealed it.

The spells, of increasing complexity, formed spirals in the air that looked like dense honeycombs, and built on each other until Severus prepared to stop Potter by force if necessary. He was expending too much magic. But the boy abruptly stood up, tilted his head as if to examine the ground from one eye only, and waved his arm.

The honeycombs collapsed, and the magic was sucked back into Potter. Severus straightened. That speed was likewise unnatural.

“This ground will do for the maze,” Potter said, in a soft, singsong tone that made it seem as if he was talking to himself. “I’ll need a few wards to keep out the magical influences that might distort what I want to do. I’ll also need to ask Malfoy what he wants it made of, and some ideas for the gifts at the turnings…”

“What are you talking about, Potter?”

That seemed to win Severus the man’s attention for the first time in nearly an hour. Potter started, turned around, and said, “The maze I’m going to build for the future Mrs. Malfoy, sir.”

“Why a maze?”

“Malfoy said in his letter that he wanted something of beauty and delicacy for his bride. That each turning of the maze would show a display of his love for her.”

 _And that must cut your heart to shreds, but you don’t look it,_ Severus thought, uneasy. Draco had told him the story of the day that he finally broke with Potter and Potter desperately begged him to stay over and over. That man, who wore his heart on his sleeve, was not the one standing here now.

The one who stood here now might make Severus’s task impossible.

“But why a _maze_ in particular?”

“I don’t know, sir. You’ll need to ask Malfoy himself that.”

Severus followed Potter back towards the house. Draco and Astoria had gone inside. Potter stood for a moment as if he had expected other instructions, then shrugged and turned towards the gates.

Severus took a long stride to stand in front of him. Potter gazed at him with calm eyes that said nothing.

“Why are you here?” Severus demanded.

“To make the gift.”

“You could have refused.”

Potter smiled for the first time. Severus didn’t like the look of it. “But that would have showed that I was still grieving, still obsessing, and that I wished the future Mrs. Malfoy harm. I don’t. I can’t be that small and petty.”

“It would hardly be small and petty to refuse to participate in the wedding of your former lover and the woman he cheated on you with.”

“But it would, sir.” Only a swift flutter of Potter’s eyelashes showed Severus’s phrasing had gone home. “It was years ago. If I can’t get over it in that time, how small-hearted am I?”

The words made sense. They were the words Draco had spoken last night at the dinner table, when Astoria had asked if it was really necessary to have Potter make her wedding gift. But somehow they still sounded a sour chord with Severus.

“Then I will also have to make sure that you do not wind that grief and bitterness into your magic.”

“Yes, sir.”

Potter was turning away, walking towards the gates where a house-elf awaited him, probably to make sure he left. Severus watched him until he went beyond the gates and Apparated, then returned to the house.

Soft harp music drifting through rooms full of cool pearly light and the scent of roses told him where Draco and Astoria were. Severus stood in the doorway, watching as Draco lay on a gray sofa with his eyes closed and his arms crossed on his chest, while Astoria stroked her harp, head bowed beneath a hanging arch of shining lilies.

“Is he gone?” Draco asked lazily, not opening his eyes.

“Yes, he Apparated. Why have you chosen a maze for Astoria’s wedding gift, Draco?”  
The harp music rose a little, Astoria ducking her head further as a blush mantled her cheeks. Severus glanced at her. He thought the maidenly air a pretense, something put on for the sake of a judging audience rather than her reality.

Since he was the only audience, it made him wonder what she was hiding.

“It will represent the wandering path that led to our love,” Draco said in a slow, hypnotic voice, without opening his eyes. “The slow, winding road we had to take. Some lovers are direct and dramatic. But we smoldered underground.”

 _That is enough juvenile metaphors for the day._ “And why choose Potter to make it, Draco?”

Draco opened his eyes with a snort. The music faltered for a second, but then Astoria went on playing, turning her back so that it was fully to both of them and she no longer had to look at their faces.

“I know that he’s still in love with me.” Draco was languorous of manner, careless of face and voice. It made Severus wonder what he, in turn, was hiding. “It makes this a bit of a risk, perhaps, that he might choose to ruin something in the gift just to hurt Astoria. But he won’t want to hurt _me_. I’m getting a great deal of cheap labor out of him. He charged me a lot, but nearly as much as he would have if he didn’t still carry a flame for me.”

“I see.” Severus’s stomach twisted a little. “You don’t think he’ll use this to take revenge?”

Draco laughed. “Potter? No. I understand him too well.”

“It has been two years. You might not know him as well as you did.”

“Why, Severus.” Draco turned around to stare at him. “It almost sounds as though you’re sympathizing with him. Do tell me that’s not the case.”

Severus curled his lip. He could not _imagine_ the point when he would sympathize with Potter. “I am telling you that the man I watched today has great power, greater control than is common with that kind of power, and the means to take revenge on you if he wishes. Be careful, Draco. Find someone else to create this wedding gift.”

“It has to be him. He’s the only one in the business of actually using his magic to create objects like this the way the client wants.” Draco shrugged and lay back down on the sofa in the pose with his hands folded over his chest. Severus contemplated telling him that he looked ready for a coffin, but refrained.

“And he’s a tame dog on a leash,” Draco murmured, closing his eyes. “You don’t understand, Severus. He’s incapable of love, but he thought he was in love with me. He’ll do anything for the chance to wriggle back into my life again. He won’t dare sabotage the gift or make my beloved Astoria upset.”

Absently, he held out a hand. Astoria took one of her hands from the harpstrings to glance her fingers across his palm.

Severus ended up shrugging. “I hope you are right.”

“Trust me. In my reading of Potter’s psyche? Always.”


	2. Working Late

Harry couldn’t sleep.

He sighed and rolled out of bed when it was nearing three in the morning. He ought to have expected this, given where he’d been today, he thought, tossing his hair out of his eyes and tying it back with a leather band so that it wouldn’t get in the way. At Malfoy Manor, seeing Draco getting ready to marry someone else? Of course it would stir up his thoughts.

But he might as well use the time. He descended the steps from his bedroom to his lab and lit the lamps and the fire with an absent wave of his hand.

A plan for the maze waited on the table, where he had been drawing it before he went to bed. Harry bent over and studied the curves for a second. He had rough notes on what piece of art or other attraction would appear in which corner of the maze, but right now, he thought the pattern itself looked wrong.

Harry closed his eyes and tapped his wand against his wrist. In a second, the sense of his own magic surrounded him, deep and green and gold and slow, a wide river. He reached out and picked up the bauble that Draco had owled him that afternoon.

It was a small ball of clouded crystal glass. Harry suspected it might once have been a Christmas tree decoration. He rolled it around in his fingers now, savoring the anticipation more than the coolness of the glass before he plunged into his sense of Astoria’s magic.

It danced lightly past him, reminding him of a skirl of notes from a flight of birds. High and piercing, delicate and restless. Harry slid the sensation over the top of his own magic, ensuring they didn’t blend. It was a difficult art, but he had plenty of practice at it by now.

Then he combined the sensations, and for a second, the world was like glass around him, like he was looking up from the inside of the bauble. Harry breathed out and sent the sense of his magic combined with the sense of Astoria’s ranging in front of him.

He would have preferred to touch Draco’s magic, but that was not to be allowed. And Astoria was the one he was creating the gift for, so he had to know what her magic was like in order to create a pattern that symbolized her.

When he opened his eyes, the pattern of lines on the parchment had shifted. Harry studied them and nodded. He wasn’t convinced this was the final pattern, but it was closer to the one he wanted. Fewer dead ends, more subtle entrances. Fewer wending curves, more sharp ones. Yes.

He laid the bauble gently down. When he had first touched it, he had thought it would carry Draco’s magic.

But even after two years, he still knew what _that_ felt like. He needed to stop accusing Draco of leading him on when Harry was the one doing all the leading.

Harry made a soft noise to himself and went back to scribbling notes on the pieces of art that would occupy the maze. Draco had taught him an important truth about himself. It wasn’t his fault that Harry had been unable to move past it, unable to let that emotion that wasn’t really love go.

*

“What are you doing here, Mr. Potter?”

Severus had come out for an early morning walk in the Manor’s gardens because he had thought it might enlighten him as to why his mind insisted on circling obsessively around Potter. He had always found the dawn and the dawn chorus soothing. But instead, he had run straight into Potter prancing around a raised bed of carnations, his eyes focused on threads of golden power hanging in the air.

“Hello, sir,” said Potter, without turning to look at him. “Are you here to make sure that I don’t mess up the gardens?” He took a step to the right, and one of the golden lines in the air altered to follow his movements.

“I am here for my own reasons that do not concern you.”

“Of course, sir.”

Severus waited a moment, but Potter never did turn to look at him. All his attention remained on those bloody golden lines in the air. After staring at Potter’s back revealed nothing, Severus turned his attention to the lines.

They formed a diagram, he realized. Something that looked a lot like a map, perhaps an outline of the damn maze that Draco wanted to gift his bride with.

“Why are you here? Do you have permission to access the grounds?”

“Yes, sir. Not the house. But enough of the grounds that I can come and design some of the minor art pieces that are going to fill the maze.”

Severus narrowed his eyes. “I didn’t realize that you were a painter, Potter. Or a sculptor.”

“I’m not, sir. The art will grow out of the magic that I’m going to use to make the maze.” Potter took a step backwards, nodded, and then faced the gates that would lead him out of the gardens. “I’ll be going back to my lab now.”

He began to walk away, his face set and abstracted. Severus stepped into his path. He received a slight jerk of Potter’s head, a widening of his eyes, and discerned from his immediate rush of satisfaction what was wrong. He had never been around Potter for so long where Potter had managed to _ignore_ him before.

“Was there something you wanted, sir?”

“I want to know why you are doing this.”

“We did discuss this yesterday, sir.”

Potter’s voice had a slight dry tone, and the way that his eyebrow rose was irritating. Severus shook his head. “I am not satisfied with your answers. I am not satisfied with Draco hiring you. I wish to accompany you back to your lab and observe the way that you work before I will be satisfied.”

Potter’s face flickered with astonishment for the briefest moment. Then he shrugged and said, “All right, sir.” It wasn’t amiability, but it also wasn’t the emotion Severus wanted. He ended up striding beside Potter as they made their way towards the Manor’s gates, and studying everything from the way he was walking to the tattered robes he was wearing.

“Why do you wear robes like that?”

“They’re convenient, sir. It doesn’t matter much if they get burned or torn by the magic I’m working with.”

“How can that possibly happen, if you are casting your spells correctly?”

Potter shot him a quick glance with no emotion behind it, as usual. “Because I’m mostly not casting spells, sir.”

Severus frowned, and held his tongue.

*

Harry had thought it would be disruptive, having Snape in his lab, but it turned out not to be. Even Snape brooding in a corner with his arms folded was surprisingly familiar. He could scowl all he liked, and Harry would do better at this kind of magic that he had invented and designed than he ever would at Potions.

Harry compared the map of the maze he had traced in the air this morning to the one he had created on the parchment, and began to alter the drawing when he saw the differences. The one he created on the grounds was always the living model, despite the fact that he had used contact with Astoria’s magic to make the drawing. It reacted to the soil available, to the angle of the light, to the air, and other intangibles of the environment. Harry would rather change his parchment a hundred times than ignore one answer the place he’d build the project gave him.

“What did you mean by not casting spells?”

Harry finished off the drawing of a new alcove that working his magic in the Manor’s gardens had given him, and glanced up. Snape was leaning on the table next to him, a ferocious scowl on his face. Harry shrugged a little. “You must have noticed by now that the spells I did on the grounds and here are wandless, sir.”

For a second, Snape’s scowl vanished. Then he said, “Wandless magic is only another name for accidental magic. You expect me to _believe_ that you could have achieved any level of power or control if your magic is accidental?”

“No, sir.”

Harry turned back to the parchment and smiled as he realized the alcove would be the proper site for a vase. He jotted the note down and then stepped back so that he could study the parchment from a distance and effectively see the pattern of the maze from above.

“What did you say?”

“I meant, no, sir, I wouldn’t expect you to believe that my control and power over this magic is accidental. I wouldn’t expect you to believe that I had any power or control at all.”

Snape was quiet again. But he remained leaning against the table as Harry picked up the glass bauble full of Astoria’s magic that Draco had sent him. Harry cradled it in his hands and closed his eyes. Now he was seeking more than the superficial feeling of her magic. He needed a hint of her emotions and personality—often reflected in the magic, yes, but just as likely to be hidden.

“What are you doing?”

“Communing, sir,” Harry said, and plunged his mind into the sea that was Astoria’s self.

It shifted back and forth, as deep a green as the bauble, though the color of the glass was probably influencing him. Harry ignored the feeling that it was cold. That was his own prejudice towards the woman. Instead, it was simply quiet, waiting. Harry could appreciate that. He had grown quieter himself in the years since—in the years since.

He stirred his mind slowly through the sense of Astoria’s personality, and relaxed a little when he realized that it was responding to him. Now he could catch glimpses of her artistic passions. She enjoyed music, both listening to it and playing it. She moved slowly, because she could. She was cat-like, the type to lounge in sunlight.

_Not cold. Not towards those she likes and values. And there is no reason for me to be one of those people._

Harry “surfaced” with a blink and turned his head to see Snape’s eyes fixed on him, narrow and angry. Harry gave a mental shrug as he put the bauble down and rolled his neck to the side; he’d been bent over it in an awkward position for at least ten minutes. He was never going to understand Snape. But given that they weren’t friends, he didn’t need to.

“What was that?” Snape demanded. “I have never felt magic like that.”

“Draco sent me this ornament that Astoria handled often enough to infuse with a sense of her magic and personality, sir,” Harry answered, moving over to the parchment. He rested his wand on it and closed his eyes, and more magic rushed forth, changing the outline of some parts of the maze. “I sense her magic and I weave that into the maze, and now I’m doing the same thing with her personality. The maze needs to reflect her, so—”

Snape grabbed his elbow. Luckily, it was the left one, so Harry’s wand could remain on the parchment and keep up the tracing it was doing without being interrupted. Harry still threw Snape an irritated glance, though. That interruption could have been a lot more disastrous. “What, sir?”

“No one can do that,” Snape said. He paused as if he thought someone would come along and scold him for the amount of noise he was making, and then lowered his voice. But he didn’t let go of Harry’s arm, which was annoying. “No one can sense someone else’s personality or magic in _glass_ and then let it infuse a drawing.”

“Well, it’s not always glass. People have sent me ornaments of bone, metal, leather, fur—all sorts of things. It’s mostly clothes, actually.” Harry gave a reminding shake of his arm, and Snape seemed to realize for the first time that he was actually touching Harry. He let him go with a scandalized stare. Harry very carefully hid his amusement as he turned back to the drawing of the maze.

“Still, no one can do that. There would have been advancements made long ago in Healing and Potions if—no one can do that.”

“It’s necessary for the work I do,” Harry said. He wondered why Snape thought it was so strange and interesting. Harry had come up with some very basic spell structures to do what he did. Really, the only reason he could manage it at all was the power of his magic. He wasn’t particularly special or clever or intuitive. Draco had always been the one who had _those_ qualities in their relationship. “So I managed to figure out a way to do it. Did you think I somehow crafted the artifacts I created a different way, sir?” he added, curious.

“I never paid enough attention to your business to care how you did it.”

Chastened, Harry focused back on the parchment and altered a few more lines. Then he nodded. The next step would have to involve actual construction.

He walked outside, assuming Snape would leave. Since he didn’t think the magic Harry used could exist, he would probably conclude Harry was lying to him and stalk away in offended pride. But for some reason, Snape followed after him, stare still intense when Harry looked over his shoulder to meet the man’s eyes. Harry gave a mental shrug and turned to the patch of his garden that he used as his practice ground.

It was flat, scraped clear of grass and everything but dirt, sand, and a few rocks. Harry swallowed air and stretched out his hands. In response, the dirt stirred, and Harry fed the impression of Astoria’s personality, his knowledge of her magic, and his memory of the new design of the maze into it.

He thought he heard Snape say something, but when Harry was in this particular mood, no outside sounds could disturb him, and a good thing, too. He might unleash terrible magic if he was disturbed—

His whole being vanished into the making.

*

Severus stared in silence, his hands clenched, as he watched the sand and rocks of this patch of Potter’s garden form themselves into walls.

It wasn’t entirely physical, in that he couldn’t see individual pebbles or grains moving. Instead, swirling streaks of magic, glassy-colored and swirling around each other in a way that reminded him of galaxies, rose from the ground and streamed around the sand and rocks. Where they passed, walls loomed behind.

They were small, no higher than Severus’s knee. They shone as white as marble. And small objects were sprouting within the walls, like blossoms.

 _Or fungi_ , Severus thought, trying deliberately to shake off the awe he could feel settling on him like dust.

But it was awe. In the center of his mind, where he couldn’t lie to himself, Severus knew that. He watched as Potter gestured again, and the swirls wrapped around his arms and licked his skin with tongues that looked like dragons’ before reaching out and becoming more and more marble-like wall material.

No one should have been able to conjure that much material from thin air, or persuade ordinary rock and soil to change into something so antithetical to their natures. No one.

It wasn’t just the power, Severus thought as he watched, tongue thick in his mouth. It was the _theory_. Even if he was using an incantation and not wandless magic, he wouldn’t have the slightest idea how to begin conjuring material like that. He could Transfigure the sand and stone, but it would have to be separately, not all at once, and into blocks, not smooth walls. They wouldn’t look like they were growing.

Potter wasn’t Transfiguring his building material. It looked as though it was simply weaving itself into existence from raw air.

_How is he doing that?_

Potter finally stepped back and opened his eyes. For a second, his face blazed with leaping power, power that was more like wildfire than the tamed one on a hearth. Nevertheless, Severus found himself moving a step forwards, wanting to warm his hands near it.

He jerked his arms back, and seemed to draw Potter’s attention. Potter tilted his head for a second, curious, like a bird, obviously not having the slightest idea how Severus regarded him. “What, sir?”

“How—how did you discover how to do that?”

“Well, the most difficult steps was discovering how to read someone’s personality and magic and then keeping the impressions when I wrote or drew the artifact I constructed to represent them,” Potter said. He stepped forwards and began to walk around the tiny maze he had constructed. Staring down into it, Severus could see miniature plinths and statues and globes of glass like the bauble Potter had communed with. It was all endlessly complicated. “Once I knew how to do that, the rest was easy.”

“Easy,” Severus repeated flatly.

“Sir, are you all right?” Potter glanced up at him with his eyebrows raised. “I mean it. It was difficult at first, less difficult later. I could teach it to someone else. It _can’t_ be that complicated.”

“Why not?” Severus demanded, wondering if the boy was being falsely modest to invite praise.

“Because I’m not that deep a thinker,” Potter said, his smile slight and pained. “Surely Draco told you that.”

“Draco was—Draco spoke in terms that sounded like a disappointed lover.”

Potter sighed. “Yes, I’m afraid I made him that way. I couldn’t give him what he needed, and I wasn’t insightful enough to let him go when he needed something else.”

Severus stared at Potter again. Potter only lifted his eyebrows a little higher and looked down at the way Severus stood where he wanted to walk. Severus moved and watched Potter stalk a little further, his brow furrowed in a way that he knew probably looked stupid. But he was unable to convince himself to look otherwise.

Potter thought that all of these magical innovations were _simple_ and _easy_. He thought that he might as well not show them off to the world and that it was only a fluke or an accident that he was the first to discover them. He thought of Draco as the one who had the complex, subtle mind that Severus would have said was behind these magical workings if he didn’t know it was Potter.

Severus watched Potter inspect the maze for something that he didn’t know enough to look for and then go back inside his lab. Severus, in the meantime, left. He thought he had seen enough, and since he didn’t know the theory behind the magic Potter was using now in any case, he would think about the other puzzle opened to his senses instead.

_What did Draco do to Potter to convince him that he’s Draco’s inferior in every way?_


	3. Blended With Aconite

Harry stepped back and studied the patch of grass in front of him with frank disgust. He had noticed that it wasn’t responding as well to his magic as the rest of the earth where he would build the maze. And now he knew why. The blue mist from his spell floated above it, rippling into the names of the Dark curses cast here.

Harry sighed. Well, given that Death Eaters had occupied the Manor during the war, that wasn’t unexpected. He would just have to—

He froze, and then felt a fine tremor make its way through his limbs. He promptly locked his teeth and continued to study the mist as if he hadn’t noticed. He knew who stood behind him, because the strong reaction of his body couldn’t be mistaken. Harry had retained lust for him long after he had learned that he wasn’t capable of love.

“Potter.”

Harry turned slowly to face Draco.

God, he was just as beautiful as ever, his white robes shimmering as though someone had stroked them with a brush made of mother-of-pearl. His face shone the same way, but Harry knew that came simply from his intelligence, his personality, coming through. It wasn’t just physical beauty that had led Harry to love Draco.

Or _try_ to love him. That was the point. Harry had never managed to love Draco the way he deserved to be loved. If he had, then Draco wouldn’t have been compelled to seek out Astoria.

Draco sighed. The sound was long and exhausted. “You’re still thinking that you wish you could be with me, aren’t you?”

Harry nodded. There was no point in lying. Besides the fact that Draco had years of Harry’s behavior with which to predict him, he was a Legilimens and could detect lies.

“Let me see.” Draco moved forwards and stretched out a hand that Harry desperately wanted to grasp and hold. Instead, he stood with his hands down at his side and let Draco grab his chin and reposition it. “It’s always possible that you’ve learned love in the months since I looked last.”

Harry met Draco’s eyes, wincing as Draco crashed into his mind. There was no other way to do this. Harry’s mind was so broken and fractured and such a _mess_ , made up of jumbled shards of memory, pain, war trauma, tattered efforts at humanity, and the taint left from being a Horcrux for so many years. Draco had to essentially swim through broken glass to get to what he wanted to see.

Harry concentrated on how much he missed Draco, how much he wished he could have been what Draco wanted and needed, how much he wished he could have been worthy—

And Draco, as always, found and tossed up the brutal memory of Harry walking through the door that day that he had come home and found Draco kneeling in front of Astoria, his mouth between her legs.

Harry flinched again, and Draco stepped back and shook his head.

“As long as you think of that as brutal,” Draco said quietly, “instead of something that had been a long time in coming, then you don’t love me.”

Harry looked at the ground.

“You never even noticed how much my behavior had changed towards you,” Draco said, and his voice was tuned to emotions that Harry knew he would never feel, harmonics he would never hear. Harry hoped that Astoria shared them with him, though. Draco deserved that, deserved to be loved and have everything he wanted. “How can _that_ be love, Harry? You thought you were making me happy by having shallow conversations and bringing little trinkets home and cooking dinner now and then. You never—”

Draco hesitated, as if wanting words, and then continued. “You never saw me. Astoria did. That’s why she’s worthy of the title of becoming my wife.”

“I’m sorry,” Harry whispered. He wondered if there was anything else he could say, but there never had been.

Draco sighed. “I’m giving you a chance to participate in the love that Astoria and I share by creating the gift for her. Don’t mess it up. Don’t make me regret having you here.”

He turned and walked back to the manor with his head bowed. Harry watched him go for as long as he could bear it, and then turned back to the blue mist smoldering above the patch of earth that had sustained so many Dark Arts curses.

He would have to do what he could with statistics and lists in the next little while, because the creative part of his brain felt snuffed.

*

“I wondered if I might speak to you for a moment, Severus?”

Severus wasn’t fond of Astoria Greengrass, who had never been one of his closest students when he was Head of Slytherin, calling him by his first name, but on the other hand, he could hardly refuse her without getting martyred looks from Draco. He inclined his head and continued sipping from the hot tea that the Malfoy house-elves had served him a short time ago.

Astoria sat down across from him, rearranging her skirts neatly, fussily. Severus watched her and wondered what Draco saw in her. Beauty, but Malfoys had never chosen their spouses primarily for that; it was more a quality that they saw as necessary rather than as a keystone. The Greengrass family wasn’t especially powerful or wealthy or well-connected, although it had a higher standing in some circles since the war than the Malfoy name did. She had never seemed terribly clever or magically strong to him as a student.

Then again, that was years ago now. Severus maintained a pleasant, neutral expression.

Astoria sighed. “I know my darling thinks this will work out…”

“This?” Severus inquired delicately. He did not particularly want to be a confidant in either wedding planning or pre-marriage woes.

“Having Potter design a gift for me,” Astoria said, tilting her head forwards so that two golden curls fell around her face.

“Ah.” Severus had recourse to his cup of tea.

“I know that Potter does detailed work and art that no one else can create,” Astoria went on in a soft, brooding voice, turning her head so that she could look out the window of the library Severus had taken refuge in. “But do we really _need_ him? Draco was the one who came up with all his ideas in the first place. Surely Draco could design this maze.”

Severus kept his eyes on the page in front of him. “Draco came up with the ideas? I did not know that.”

Astoria nodded, her voice still rippling along like water. “Yes. He told me once. Potter is the only one who had the powerful magic that could make the art happen, but Draco created the idea of the company and the formulas that he uses to manipulate his magic.”

“Formulas?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t pay that much attention. I only know that I don’t want him here, and Draco doesn’t seem inclined to listen to me.” Astoria turned around and stared at Severus with those wounded eyes that he had seen so much of in the last few weeks. “Could you speak to Draco and get him to send Potter away?’

“I find it best not to involve myself in such debates between lovers,” Severus said. His voice didn’t curdle on that last word, which he would regard as the miracle he was entitled to today. “But I need to speak with Potter on a different matter. It might be that I can hint at your discomfort and persuade him to leave that way.”

“Thank you,” Astoria breathed. Almost everything about her was breathy, Severus thought as she stood and glided out of the library. The way she moved was like an insect drifting on the breeze, and her neck resembled the drooping stem of a cut flower, and her hair floated in curls too soft to be natural. Severus was surprised that Draco wanted someone like her.

But then Severus shrugged. Even less than lovers’ quarrels did he wish to become involved in policing a former student’s _preferences._ He went in search of Potter.

*

“Is it true that Draco came up with the idea for your art?”

Harry blinked and glanced up from the list he’d made of various places in the Malfoy gardens that were too scorched by Dark Arts to be part of the maze. “Oh, hello, sir. Yes, he did. He was the one who pointed out that there had to be ways to make wandless magic obey with formulas instead of just assuming it was free of theory, the way so many people do.”

Harry looked down and made another check mark on his list. Yes, he could see the ways that he would have to change the map of the maze so that it could bend and avoid those patches of scorched ground. Or perhaps he could incorporate them?

But no. He could only do that if Astoria’s personality contained analogues of those areas, and Harry might envy her, might nearly hate her, but he wasn’t _that_ foolish. She had nothing that dark in her, nothing that twisted. It was one reason Draco loved her.

Harry moved to write down a way to make the maze twist around the first patch he had identified that morning, only to have Snape interrupt. “And you think that is the same as coming up with what you do?”

It was obviously doing him no good to concentrate on the list right now, so Harry put it down and turned to look up at Snape. The man stood with his arms folded and the sneer on his face manifested full-force. Harry wondered idly if Snape thought he had been lying for not telling him this right away, and if it lowered his opinion of what Harry could do.

Well. Then again, Harry _had_ told him that what he did wasn’t especially creative, and that someone else could learn it easily. He didn’t think it had been a lie. Snape just hadn’t indicated he’d like all the details before this.

With a small shrug, Harry said quietly, “Of course it is, sir. Draco sees things in one creative swoop. His mind just—flies there. That’s the true mark of genius. I’m the one who has to plod along the trail and put all the markers together one by one. Do you know how many tests it took me before I could build a living model of artwork like the maze I’m creating here? Hundreds. Draco would have had it in one try.”

“And yet, he is not creating the kind of art that you are.”

“Well, no, sir. He doesn’t have to. And he wouldn’t have wanted to stay with me to do it.”

Snape scowled more furiously than ever. Harry wondered if he had come from Astoria or Draco to test him about the project in a different way. Did they want to make sure that Harry wasn’t claiming title to Draco’s cleverness or ideas?

Well, he couldn’t. He didn’t know the first thing about how to make his mind fly as swiftly as Draco’s.

“I truly wish that I knew how Draco convinced you that you are inferior to him in every way.”

Harry winced a little as the memory bubbled to the surface of his mind again. But he wasn’t going to share the details with Snape. Draco could tell him if he wanted to. Harry ignored the guilt that overwhelmed like him midnight at the thought and answered, “It took a lot of convincing, sir. I wasn’t a good student of his for three years.”

“Three years?”

“That was how long he loved Astoria before I found out, sir. I never noticed he was unhappy for that long.”

Snape’s shoulders seemed to tighten. Harry found himself wondering for a moment whether wings would unfold from them, and then shook his head sharply. Those speculations about Snape being part-bat had been unkind, and Harry wasn’t going to indulge in them, not now, when he was really trying to be a better person.

“So he cheated on you with a woman, and yet remained with you. And you—what? Blame yourself for not seeing the truth?”

“For hurting him, sir,” Harry corrected him. It was so hard to explain to anyone outside the situation. The same thing happened when he tried to talk with Ron and Hermione, great friends though they were. They just wanted to blame Draco. They didn’t understand all the complexities, or the moral crimes Harry had committed. “That’s why he’s right to blame me. Because I hurt him, and if I’d really been _alive_ to what was hurting him, then I would have noticed.”

Snape’s fingers writhed for a second as though he wanted his wand. Harry hoped Snape wouldn’t duel him. He was afraid of lashing out with his magic when he got in a battle situation and destroying someone. It was one reason he hadn’t become an Auror.

“What was _his_ excuse for remaining with you for three years?”

“He was trying to teach me what it was like to love, sir. Make me understand.” Harry shook his head. “He tried to heal me. It didn’t work. He fully acknowledges that he was wrong to do that, because I just don’t know what love is, sir.”

“You don’t respect me at all, do you?”

It was such an unexpected change of subject that Harry felt like he blinked at Snape for a full minute before he could speak. A breeze lifted his hair and a peacock clucked somewhere across the gardens, but neither the words nor Snape’s hard, suspicious stare changed.

“I—I respect you, sir? I know a lot more about what you did in the war for our side now. And I know that—”

“You bark the word ‘sir’ as if it’s a mindless sound,” Snape said, and his sneer was impressive, in a way. “As if it’s nothing but a blurt of air that you expel from your lips and fling away from you as soon as possible.”

“I—well, I can’t call you Professor Snape, since you’re not a professor anymore.” Harry’s brain was scrambling in circles trying to figure this out. Somehow he had gone from designing the maze to describing Draco’s mind to reminiscing on the past to a discussion about what he called Snape. “Do you want me to just not call you anything?” It would be hard to break the “sir” habit, but Harry was sure he could.

“I _have_ a name.”

Harry nodded slowly. “All right, Snape. If you want—”

“Not _that_ one. I thought you were—” Snape stopped, and then continued. Harry found himself vaguely curious about what the end of the sentence would have been, but not as interested as he was in the words Snape was speaking now. “Speak the other one.”

“All right, Severus.” Harry spoke it while keeping one eye on Snape’s sneer. Any moment it would change, he was sure, and Snape would laugh at him for having fallen for the joke. Or this was also part of the test. Draco and Astoria wanted to make sure that Harry wouldn’t try to get too close to anyone while he was designing the maze, perhaps.

Snape seemed to smooth his feathers down at all once, like a raven who had been ruffled, and he nodded. “See that you keep using it, Potter.” Then he turned and marched away.

Baffled, Harry shook his head and picked up his scroll again. Well, perhaps whatever the test was, he had passed it. Or maybe Snape just really did think that Harry was being mindless when he spoke the “sir,” and wanted something more meaningful.

Harry still didn’t think he could bring himself to use it often. It was too much as though Snape was inviting him into the sort of inner circle that Draco and Astoria must occupy with him, and Harry knew well enough that that kind of place wasn’t for him.

*

Severus closed his eyes. He was in a cool area of the Malfoy gardens, shaded by a long tree branch above, with the sweet scent of oranges and lemons dancing around him, a cup of shining water in his hands, the peacocks chased away by spells. The padded seat of the chair was comfortable. Near his left hand lay a fascinating book from the Malfoy libraries on the influence of lunar cycles on brewing.

And still, he could think of nothing but the shining adoration in Potter’s eyes when he spoke of how much of a genius he thought Draco was.

This wasn’t a prank. This wasn’t some false modesty where he tried to lure Severus to give him compliments under the guise of pretending not to believe he deserved them.

This was the truth.

A certain coil of Severus’s mind had to admire Draco for what he had achieved. He had utterly burned up Potter’s sense of self-worth and reduced him to cringing apology for being fucked around on. That was a plateau that Severus had never managed to achieve with his students.

But the rest of him was appalled. And another question had been added to the one about what had happened to reduce Potter to that state.

Why did Draco want Potter _here_ , designing this wedding gift? Astoria was right that it seemed counterintuitive, no matter how easily Draco could pay for Potter’s work or how much he wanted to show off his new bride to his old lover.

Severus picked up his water and drank. Then he opened the book and stared at the first page, depicting the phases of the moon, for seven minutes without seeing anything. His internal clock timed it.

A moving figure caught his eye. Potter was walking towards the gate of the grounds, several scrolls of parchment tucked under his arm and a thoughtful look on his face.

Severus stood. While part of him knew that following Potter back to his laboratory would yield no new insights—he had already been there—he took a step forwards and called Potter’s name. Potter turned around and headed towards him.

“Yes, si—Severus?”

Severus stared in silence at the placid green eyes, the face that concealed what it was thinking now that Potter knew someone was watching him, the slightly tilted head as Potter waited for whatever Severus would say. And Severus decided that only something unexpected would pull an honest reaction from Potter, the way he had stirred one up by asking Potter to call him by his first name.

“Have lunch with me.”

Potter’s attention flickered towards the Manor. “Draco asked me not to come inside or have the house-elves serve me anything.”

Severus narrowed his eyes. “I didn’t mean that we would stay here. Come with me to Diagon Alley.”

That did get him a wide-eyed stare, but in seconds, the placid expression was back, as though Potter thought making one mistake in his life meant he had no right to express opinions or worry about anything again. “All right. Please choose the restaurant, so I can be sure that you’ll have something you like to eat.”

Severus did lead the way, while he felt as though he would bite through his tongue in frustration.

_This lunch had better yield some damn revelations._


	4. A Light Lunch

“This is fine, sir—I mean, Severus.”

Severus studied Potter with narrow eyes as he sat down across from him at the table outside the newest restaurant in Fantastic Alley. Potter blinked at him and shifted his weight a little in the seat. Both chairs and tables were made of birch wood and, as far as Severus was concerned, more upscale than a place he needed to take Potter. But he had accepted that he would find this lunch stressful no matter what truths he discovered, so he had chosen a place where he could at least approve of the food and the ambience.

“Why does it give you so much trouble to speak my first name when I have requested that of you?” Severus asked, and waved his wand to Summon the menus.

Potter waited until the winged menus had landed on the table to answer. “I’ve never thought of you that way. And the last time we interacted was—unpleasant for both of us. I was trying to keep it polite.”

Severus grimaced. Yes, the last time they’d interacted before Malfoy Manor had been his trial. He supposed he couldn’t blame Potter for attempting a neutral distance given what he had said then. “I wish to start things on a different footing now.”

He got one glimpse of narrowed green eyes, absolute disbelief, and then it vanished. “All right. What did you want to talk about?”

“Let us order first.”

Potter nodded and glanced at the menu. For a moment, his mouth tightened, but then it vanished just like every other emotional reaction Severus had managed to pull out of him. “I’ll be ordering the tomato bisque soup, then,” he said, and folded up his menu, absently pulling a crinkling wing out of the fold when it almost got caught.

Severus narrowed his eyes. “That comes in a small bowl, Potter. Will it be enough for your lunch?”

Potter nodded. “I usually eat a light lunch when I’m working this hard. It’s better for my magic if my breakfast and dinner are the heavy meals.”

No lie sounded, but Severus thought he knew why when he picked over the words in his head. “You _usually_ eat a light lunch, but you weren’t necessarily planning to today.” He leaned forwards. “Tell me, Potter, what is the problem? Eating lunch here, eating lunch with _me_ , or eating?”

Potter tightened his hands on the edge of the table for a moment. Then he said, “Here. The menu’s pricy enough that I’m choosing the cheapest thing I can so I have enough money to last the rest of the week, all right?” His eyes had hardened, and after a second, he took his hands off the table and dug his fingernails into his wrist.

Severus blinked for a moment. He honestly had enough money now—some of it made from potions, some from guilty gifts after the dunderheads of the Order had realized he was fighting on their side, and some from blackmail—that that particular problem hadn’t occurred to him.

And it shouldn’t have occurred to _Potter_ , he realized after a moment of thought. “You inherited a fortune, Potter. Blow through it already?”

“Something like that.”

But the man’s eyes darted away from him, and Severus didn’t think before he leaned across the table and grasped Potter’s wrist. Feeling the hammering of the pulse against his fingers told him the truth better than his Legilimency, which wasn’t working at the moment with Potter’s careful choice of words. “Tell me what happened.”

“Why? Si—Severus, we’ve never been friends. I respect you enough not to want to burden you with sob stories. You ought to respect yourself at least that much.”

This wasn’t the Potter Severus had known, was nothing _like_ the Potter Severus had known. He’d thought differently, for a moment, seeing his expressions and hearing the anger in his voice. But now he knew. Potter had tucked it away again. He’d probably deployed the anger at all only in a bid to keep Severus from pushing further.

“You’re going to order, right?” Potter asked, his eyes traveling from Severus’s hold on his wrist to his face.

Severus narrowed his eyes. “Two sandwiches, one with goat’s cheese and tomatoes, one with chicken and tomatoes,” he told the menu. Both of them spread their wings and rose from the table, skimming away.

“You’re not getting anything to drink?”

“I do not generally drink in the middle of the day, Potter,” Severus replied, and leaned back a little as a small pot of tea appeared on the table, accompanied by glasses and a plate full of enough sugar, lemon slices, and small cups of milk to make the metal almost sag. “This will be enough for me.”

Potter looked away for a second, then nodded and started to prepare his own tea.

“I still would like to know the tale of your dissipated fortune,” Severus added casually when some minutes had passed by and he and Potter had done nothing but make their tea to their own liking and drink.

*

_He would think it’s as ridiculous as Hermione did._

There were times that Harry thought Hermione was right, when he’d spent enough time listening to her. But on the other hand, he could never erase the guilt of what he had done to Draco. Donating most of his money to projects and organizations that helped victims of emotional abuse, like that he had inflicted on Draco, would at least help other people.

Harry would have told Snape about that if it was just that Snape would think he was ridiculous, because that wasn’t worth keeping the truth to himself. But he didn’t know how much Draco had told Snape about their past relationship, and he didn’t want to expose a secret Draco wanted to keep quiet.

“It wasn’t very interesting, what I did with it,” Harry said. “It made sense at the time.” He looked up as a tray floated towards their table. It had a small bowl of his soup on it and Snape’s sandwiches. Harry waited for Snape to take his own plate before he lifted off the bowl and reached for his spoon.

For some reason, Snape had two plates. Harry was ready to shrug and dismiss that until Snape put one of the sandwiches on the second plate and sent it skidding towards Harry with a flick of his fingers.

Harry stared at him. “What are you doing?”

“Feeding you. Since you don’t have enough money to do it yourself.” Snape flicked his glance up and down Harry in much the same way that he’d moved his fingers. “And you apparently haven’t been taking care of yourself in other respects, either.”

Harry rolled his eyes and began eating his soup, leaving the sandwich where it was. Snape could pack it up and take it home with him for later if he really wasn’t hungry now. “You don’t understand me, sir.”

“I have _asked_ you—”

“Severus, then. But it’s still true.” The soup was creamy and curled around his tongue. Harry sighed in satisfaction before he could stop himself, and Snape’s glare turned smug. “This is a good place to eat,” Harry added in as neutral a tone as he could, and sipped his tea.

“You will eat the sandwich because I ordered it for you,” Snape said. He was making quick work of his own meal, swift, neat bites that Harry envied. Despite Draco’s best efforts, Harry’s table manners were still deplorable. “The one with the goat’s cheese, in fact. It looks as if you could use some protein.”

Harry didn’t allow the words to strike home this time. Getting angry at people only made him abuse them, and Snape was Draco’s friend, or at least ally. “No, thanks, Severus,” he said, and made sure to slurp his soup loudly as he finished. Snape was less likely to want to spend time with him if he _really_ showed off his lack of manners.

In fact, though, Snape’s eyes just narrowed to slits. “You are surely not being so impolite as to refuse an offered gift, Mr. Potter?”

Harry paused, caught. _Shit_. It was possible that Snape saying something about this to Draco could get him tossed out of the Manor and off the project of making the wedding gift for Astoria, and deprive Draco of something he wanted. Harry sighed and lowered the bowl. “No. But you didn’t _need_ to do it.”

“Think of it as a trade, then. Eat the sandwich, and tell me what happened to your fortune in return.”

Harry stared at him. “Somehow that makes me think that you’re getting two things you want, and I’m getting nothing.” The point would have been more impressive if his stomach hadn’t rumbled a minute later.

Snape smirked at him, and Harry sighed and ate the sandwich. Snape watched him as if he wanted to make sure that Harry ate the whole thing, but the minute Harry was done, he leaned intently forwards, and then his attitude made sense. He’d been watching for the moment when Harry could talk again.

Harry sighed and said, “I donated most of my money. That’s true. I chose victims that I thought needed it and no one else was helping enough. I’m sorry that it’s not some deep dark secret,” he couldn’t help adding when he saw the way Snape’s eyes had narrowed.

*

_He’s telling the truth. How can he be telling the truth and yet be going out of the way to keep the secret so—secret?_

Severus just stared at Potter, and found no more answers than he had before he invited him to lunch. At least now he knew that the man wouldn’t faint on him from performing intense magic and then eating almost nothing. Severus was, in fact, tempted to order pudding and force it down Potter’s throat if necessary.

Not really because Potter needed it. Just because spiting him was an instinct so old that Severus found himself fighting to keep his mouth shut.

“Is there anything else that you wanted to ask me?” Potter was tapping his wand against a small crystal band that encircled his wrist, which lit up with numbers as Severus watched. “Only I should get back to the Manor gardens soon, so that I can take advantage of the light.”

“To make your sketches?” Severus made no motion to stand. This was an elegant enough restaurant that no one would try to chase them away before they wished to leave.

Not that Potter seemed to appreciate the ambience, of course, judging from the way he kept looking at the band on his wrist instead of the tables or the teapot or the winged menus that hovered nearby. “No. I need to use the light as a component in one of the spells I’m going to try. To get rid of some of the patches of ground burned by the Dark Arts,” he added, probably because he felt Severus’s eyes on him.

“You cannot use light as a component of a spell,” Severus said.

“Oh, come on, sir. I mean, Severus. You must know better than that. For example, the Draught of Peace is twice as potent if brewed under the light of a full moon. What is that if not using the light as a component of—”

“What.”

Potter paused, his fingers curling around the handle of his teacup but remaining motionless. “What?”

“The Draught of Peace is _not_ twice as potent if brewed under the light of a full moon.” Severus could feel shards of ice crunching in his chest, and knew himself well enough to recognize the rage it would break forth as soon. “You are lying, Potter.” That was not something Potter had got from the Half-Blood Prince’s book. And every other insight he had into Potions had come from cheating, Severus was sure.

Potter studied him with narrowed eyes as if he didn’t understand the reaction. “Yes, it is, sir.” He didn’t bother correcting himself this time. “I mean, it must be common knowledge, if I could notice it. I don’t even brew the Draught of Peace that often. And moonstone is the first ingredient placed in the cauldron and it’s used _twice_. Why wouldn’t the light of the full moon double the potency? It seems obvious to me.”

Severus just did some more staring. After a moment, he managed to find his voice. “Did Draco come up with that particular—innovation?”

Potter nodded eagerly, his face transfigured as if with a Cheering Charm. “Yes, of course! I told you that he was behind the foundation of everything I do in my business. He could have done much more magnificent things than I do, but I can’t blame him for not wanting to make a go of it. I know that he wouldn’t want making things tainted by the fact that I can do the same.” Potter smiled, a bit wistfully.

Severus couldn’t stand it anymore. For one thing, if Draco knew this, it was knowledge that he had never bothered to pass onto Severus despite letting him have free run of the ancient Malfoy library. And for another, Severus had had _enough_ of Potter’s uncomplicated worship of Draco.

He slipped into Potter’s mind with Legilimency.

Or he tried. He seemed to crash into a mass of splinters, which hurt him so badly that he shouted before he thought better of it. He caught a brief glimpse, before Potter’s mind ejected him, of shattered memories, leaning barriers, smoking ruins littered with broken glass.

He opened his eyes and saw Potter holding his hand over his nose, which had begun to bleed. Severus said nothing through his own pounding headache, but his death glare demanded answers. What kind of Occlumency had _that_ been?

“I think this lunch is through,” Potter said, his voice clipped. He tossed a few Galleons on the table—enough to pay for the soup and the sandwich he’d eaten—and stood, turning away to face the edge of the small railing around the restaurant. Sparks crackled and danced on his skin.

Severus stood up. “Potter—”

“ _Do not_ , Snape.”

Severus froze. The sparks on Potter’s skin had risen and were circling Severus’s head, orbiting close to his ears, their buzzing more threatening than anything he had heard since the Dark Lord’s death. And Potter had turned, and Severus finally saw the anger on his face that he had been trying to arouse. It was a killing anger.

Potter took a step towards him, his lowered voice the only concession to the fact that they were in public. Well, that and perhaps the size of the sparks that had arrived to hover next to Severus’s ears and neck. Severus had no doubt that they could hurt him, but they weren’t large enough to attract notice.

“I could kill you now,” Potter breathed. “Did you know that? I could order this magic to flow into your brain and burn you to death.”

Severus could think of nothing to say. He had wanted this reaction, but not—focused on him. Although who Potter should get angry at when he was staying away from Draco and Astoria, and Severus was not about to accompany him anywhere near his friends, _was_ a question.

Potter smiled at him. His grin was violent enough to make Severus try reaching for his wand, but the spark near his hand burned it. “Yeah,” Potter said quietly. “I accept that Draco wanted you to watch over me, but anything other than that? It _ends_ now. No more. I’m not calling you by your first name or going out to lunch with you again or letting you read my mind.”

“I only wanted to—”

“ _It doesn’t matter._ You nearly robbed me of one of Draco’s secrets. You had _no right_.”

Severus clenched his teeth as he began to understand the nature of this sudden awakening. Potter hadn’t become angry because Severus had tried to read his mind without permission, or even because of the pain. He had done it because Severus might have seen something Draco had probably told Potter to keep silent about.

“I know of no other wizard who could burn me with your magic the way you say you can,” Severus said, for something to say, because he was trying to find his footing again.

“Yeah, well, it’s probably good that we don’t have more wizards like me.” Potter snapped his fingers, and the sparks zoomed back to him and melted into his skin. Some of the other diners were eyeing them strangely now, probably trying to work out what they were doing. Potter didn’t seem to notice or care. “Anyway. Stay away from me from now on, Snape.”

He strode rapidly across the terrace outside the restaurant and Apparated the second he was past the wards. Severus studied the place where he had been.

Potter’s request was ridiculous, of course. Severus had to figure out _why_ Potter had developed into this man who refused to stand up for himself, who defended a lover he hadn’t had a relationship with in years, and who could kill with a few bursts of wandless magic.

But in the meantime, Severus could start with small annoyances.

He replaced the Galleons Potter had put on the table with his own money, paying for everything, and dropped the coins into his own pocket. Returning them to Potter would make for enough of an opening gambit.

*

Harry groaned softly and leaned against the wall of his lab. The Legilimency headache, from _twice_ in one fucking day, was tearing his skull to shreds. He Summoned a painkilling potion and drank it down without flinching from the taste, something that almost never happened.

But he had achieved what he needed to achieve. He had kept Snape from seeing and misunderstanding the memory that Draco had pulled up that morning.

 _Everyone_ would misunderstand that memory. Harry had never let Ron and Hermione see it, of course, but he had described it to them, and he’d had a hard time keeping Ron from murdering Draco. And Harry knew, objectively, that it looked pretty bad from the outside.

But they didn’t understand. They didn’t grasp how long Draco had been suffering, thinking about leaving Harry but worrying about what would happen to him if he did. He honestly had thought he could teach Harry how to love. It wasn’t his fault that he had been wrong.

Harry paused at the tail end of that thought. _Speaking of things that aren’t other people’s fault. Snape had no idea what you were guarding when he tried to get into your head._

Harry sighed. No, he didn’t. Which meant that Harry had to make it up to him somehow. But letting him see the memory was out of the question, and so was calling him by his first name or paying whatever weird game Snape had decided they were playing. Harry had to do something that paid the debt created by threatening to _kill_ him ( _really_ , he chided himself) and then put distance between them.

A gift would probably do nicely. A gift that drew on the theories Draco had been the first one to suggest and would flummox Snape with how well Harry had managed to sense his magic during the short time they’d interacted.

A flummoxed Snape was one that would stay away from him. He wouldn’t want Harry to see him flustered in any way whatsoever.

Harry smiled, and walked over to his workbench to gather up one of the small crystal balls that had had all the time it needed to collect moonlight. This would also be a marvelous illustration for Snape of how light could be a component in a spell.

*

“I wish that you had told me, Draco.”

Draco rolled over slowly on his bed and blinked at Severus. “Told you what?”

Severus tried not to roll his eyes as he glanced around the bedroom. He was all for a certain level of comfort, but Draco had taken comfort straight past that and into the realms of the absurd. The walls dripped gold, tapestries, mirrors, and lamps, and the ceiling had enough chandeliers that Severus didn’t know which ones were actually casting light.

The bed itself was a single huge, round mass of softness that more resembled a gigantic cushion than anything else. The covers and sheets were done in grey, something Severus had thought restrained until he touched them. The silken nature of them, slipping with a whisper through his fingers, more than made up for their color.

“Told me that you had discovered how to make the Draught of Peace more potent when brewed by the light of a full moon.” Severus removed his eyes from the display of wealth and faced Draco. “You ought to have known I would be intrigued by such a discovery.”

“What are you talking about?”

Severus sighed. “You left so much else behind at Hogwarts. I would have thought you would have left behind the childish habit of pretending that you do not recognize the truth when it parades in front of you.”

“I _didn’t_ discover any method of making the Draught of Peace more potent, Severus. Did you? How wonderful! Are you going to share it with me?”

Severus stared at him. He had been sure—he knew Potter had not lied to him—

And then a spasm of irritation gripped him. _Of course._ The ability of a Legilimens to detect lies was limited in the same way as Veritaserum was: it could be fooled by deception if the person speaking it honestly believed it to be the truth. And Potter gave Draco all the credit for his own work already.

Severus should have known.

But in truth, it had been easier to believe that Draco would keep something like this from him than to believe that _Potter_ had made such a significant Potions discovery on his own.

“I have only recently begun to test the method,” Severus murmured. “I don’t yet know for certain if it works. I would appreciate it if you didn’t spread the word around.”

Draco sighed a little and leaned back on the bed, the animation going out of his face. It made Severus realize how blank-faced he was most of the time, even when he was most involved in planning his own wedding. “Of course not, Severus. You must realize that I wouldn’t steal the credit.”

“I am not so much worried about you stealing the credit as I am about you being accidentally responsible for a death or a coma.”

Draco laughed. “Of course. There are fools who would try and make the Draught of Peace that way even when it hasn’t been tested, aren’t there?” He shook his head. “Well, no fear. I’ll keep the secret until you’re ready to announce it.”

Severus nodded distantly and then turned and left the bedroom before he made some truly unfortunate comment on Draco’s taste.

He descended the steps with a storm churning inside him, but he had no idea how it would find expression. Pressing Potter on the matter of Draco would do less than no good. He doubted he could invite the man to lunch again and have him accept the invitation, unless he pretended it was about wedding business, and then Potter would probably refuse to come because he would think it wasn’t about the gift. He had rather strict boundaries about intruding on the rest of Draco’s life.

The storm growing inside Severus grew worse at that.

Merlin knew how many other Potions secrets or different, casually-discovered kinds of magic Potter hid. And they were going to _waste_. The injustice of that bit with sharp fangs at Severus’s soul.

He couldn’t intimidate Potter into telling him the truth, and reading his mind hadn’t worked. That meant he would have to—go the slow route. Lull Potter into trust, into opening up to him the way that, right now, Potter had no reason to.

Severus smiled slowly. Once, such a course would have been so offensive to him that he would never have considered it. But he was far more than the broken man he had been when he taught at Hogwarts, and hatred of Potter for the sake of his name and his resemblance to his father alone no longer controlled Severus’s actions.

_Think of it as recovering secrets Potter should not be allowed to hoard all to himself. Think of it as getting past that blasted stubbornness. Think of it as revenge on Draco for his horrible décor._

Severus could lie to himself as well as to others. However he needed to accomplish this, he was going to do it.


	5. Pressing Closer

Harry stepped back from the hunk of black wood that he’d chosen to mold Snape’s gift from. He was panting, and his hands shook a little. He frowned and reached for the cup of cool water that he’d set beside the table when he began. The water was lukewarm, revealing one reason for his exhaustion. He must have been working far longer than he’d thought.

He studied the wood. It had been so much harder than he’d envisioned. He supposed that was because he was working from his impression of Snape’s magic only, not some object like the one Astoria had sent him that was infused with a sense of it.

But still, Harry had finished creating the physical form of the gift and most of the enchantment that would guard it. It was a stand with drawers on the bottom and storage for potions vials on the top. It would respond to Snape’s magic alone, perfectly preserving the potions or ingredients as long as they were stored there.

However, Snape would also be able to “tune” the magic surrounding it so that it would corrupt the ingredients and potions if they were removed by someone unauthorized. He could make them rot, turn to poison, or explode as he wished.

When Harry added the last bit of magic, Snape could even make it invisible. Part of the strain right now was that the enchantment was lunging against Harry’s control, longing to be completed. But Harry had to hold it in check, or _he_ wouldn’t be able to see the stand to work on it.

Harry sighed. This would fulfill the debt and probably irritate Snape, because he wouldn’t want to reject it but would be unable to pay Harry for it.

Harry smiled slightly. Both of those were benefits, and he wasn’t sure which one was the greater.

*

“Come tell me what carvings you want on the sides of your gift.”

Severus could not have imagined a less likely sentence to begin the conversation he needed to have with Potter. But he finally nodded and followed Potter from the gates of the Manor, where he had come to catch him, to what seemed to be his workspace near a large bed of blue flowers in the back of the gardens.

Potter was limping, his face pale and marked with sweat despite the coolness of the morning. Severus lengthened his strides to walk beside him. Potter ignored him, not even glancing at him.

Severus sharpened the needle of his voice to prick in Potter’s most vulnerable place. “Draco told me that he did not, in fact, invent the method by which the potency of the Draught of Peace can be multiplied beneath a full moon.”

Potter turned his whole body towards the mention of Draco, subtly, even if he never stopped walking. Severus found his fists clenching. He ignored it, however. He had given up on understanding his own reactions where Potter was concerned.

“Oh, well, he has so many ideas that he probably doesn’t understand the greatness of what he suggested,” Potter said. “That was all I did, build on a suggestion he had. But he came up with the original idea. He could do so much better than I could if he’d ever cared to investigate.”

“Does it _occur_ to you, Potter, that the credit and honor belong to the one who _does_ the investigation and perfects the method?”

“Come on, Snape. The next thing you know, you’ll be telling me that grunt work like the kind you had us doing in Potions in Hogwarts is the thing that should be honored, instead of the skill you bring to it.”

Potter’s tone was amused, and Severus nearly fell for it, nearly lashed out. He barely managed to restrain himself with a harsh hiss of breath. Potter raised an eyebrow at him and limped on. Severus said, after a moment when they had rounded a terrace but still hadn’t come in sight of whatever Potter wanted to show him, “What did you mean by the carvings on the side of my gift?”

“What was difficult about the words I used?”

“You have no reason to want to make gifts for me.”

“I owe you a debt for the way I treated you at lunch yesterday,” Potter said simply, and then he reached out and waved his hand. Sharp, short veils of magic pulled back, and Severus hated the way they made him reach for his wand. But then he caught sight of what the veils had been hiding, and lost his breath.

The potions and storage stand was carved of the finest dark ebony he had ever seen. The drawers had handles of silver, and Severus could feel the buzz of the enchantment from here. His fingers twitched. The buzzing was forming in the back of his skull, in fact, which shouldn’t be happening. He turned a dark stare on Potter.

Potter shrugged a little. “I’ll release the enchantment to you when it’s finished, but it isn’t yet. When it is, then you can make the stand preserve anything in it perfectly for years, but also make those ingredients or vials self-destruct in any way you wish if someone else removes them. Oh, and you can make it invisible, but I have to make it visible to me for right now so I can keep working on it.”

Severus closed his eyes and felt his mental way along the path of the enchantment instead of answering. A second later, he found the answer he had already suspected from his observation of Potter’s work the other day. “You tied this to my magic. How?”

“To my impression of your magic,” Potter corrected. “That’s why I need your help now. I didn’t have something like the ornament Astoria sent me to root your magic properly. The carvings, which you’ll choose, will help do that.”

“I have never even heard of something like this.”

“Oh, well, like I said, it isn’t really your magic, just my impression, so—”

“No, you idiot,” Severus said, and spun around to stare at Potter. The man simply blinked at him, even when Severus stalked up to him. “A gift like this that can do even one of those things. And to tie it to me alone?” His fingers twitched. “This is a gift that others would kill to possess.”

“Well, you don’t need to.”

Potter’s dry voice made Severus fall back a step. For a moment, he could swear that the man staring at him was in fact the one he would have expected the boy at Hogwarts to grow into.

Then the flash was gone, and Potter turned and trod heavily to the side of the stand, his fingers spread. “What kinds of carvings do you want? Think carefully. It would help if they were animals or plants, and if they represented things that you thought of as protective.”

Severus remained still. He _wanted_ that stand, of course he did. It was something he would never be able to buy or create for himself. But he wanted to understand Potter more, and force his understanding of Potter onto him. Make him see the truth, not whatever delusion he persisted in.

“Why are you limping?” he asked, as a way to begin.

“I put a lot into the magic last night.” Potter shrugged and kept his hand poised. “When I use that much power, it usually takes a toll on my muscles. The limp is pretty rare, but it happens sometimes.”

Severus gave a sharp laugh, which resulted in a sharp glance from Potter. Severus walked up so that he stood on the opposite side of the rich wood from Potter, and murmured, “You used so much magic that it literally began to feed on your muscles. And you want to complete the carvings _now_? When you are shaking with fatigue?”

Potter hesitated. “Part of that is the enchantment fighting me. When you tell me what carvings you want, then I can release it and start healing.”

Severus shook his head and rested a hand on the object Potter was creating for him. It promptly strained towards him. He felt the welcoming magic opening to enfold his like another hand, fingers twining with his. It made his breath come short.

In his lifetime, no one had _ever_ made or done something for him like this. Lily included.

The thought didn’t bring the kind of grief, and sharp impatience with his own grief, with it that it usually did. Perhaps because he had a far more potent cause of impatience standing across from him. He looked into Potter’s eyes and said, “I insist you rest. You will _not_ damage my gift because you were unable to listen to common sense.”

Potter nodded after a second. Severus knew very well that it was because of what Severus had said about the gift rather than because he didn’t want to damage himself, but Severus didn’t care. He had the beginnings of what he needed to accomplish. “Yes, all right. I’ll go back to the lab and eat—”

“Or you’ll begin working on Astoria’s gift again. How stupid do you think I am, Potter?”

“ _Not_ stupid at all, sir.”

The tone, the address, the grin Potter said it with, were all meant to irritate him. Severus let the irritation rise up inside him and then splash harmlessly against his mental shields. He could do that when he had a greater goal in mind, too. “Then you won’t be going back to the lab. You’ll be coming to my house.”

Potter already had his mouth open to refuse, probably because he’d thought Severus was going to suggest the Manor, but now he closed it and swallowed. “You would welcome me into your home, sir?”

“I don’t welcome anyone who calls me that. You will address me by my first name, as I once requested.”

Potter’s head came up, his jaw firmed, and he looked as if he wanted to bite off Severus’s nose. “No thank you, _sir_. If those are the conditions, then I’ll just stay here and sit on the grass or something.”

“I will call you by your first name as well.”

Potter actually took a step back from him, which was so amusing that Severus had to work to control his expression. “I—what? But sir, you don’t _want_ to do that. And you shouldn’t have to do it to yourself just so that I’ll rest. I promise, I _will_. I’ll lie in the sun with my eyes closed and not do anything else!”

Severus paused. Potter’s distress was real. He would have sworn another Unbreakable Vow on his certainty of the damned fact. But it made no _sense_ when he had spent his whole morning trying to irritate and bribe Severus.

_No, wait, of course it does, when Potter thinks everyone deserves consideration but him. He doesn’t want me to do something he thinks is going to cause me pain, as opposed to irritation._

Severus gentled his voice, leaning forwards so that he caught Potter’s eye. “Listen to me, _Harry_. I am doing this because I want to have my gift completed by someone in top condition, and because I want to talk to you more about the process of your magic. I would enjoy learning how to do it myself.”

Potter relaxed at once. If Severus was understanding him better—and he thought he was—that had come about because of Severus’s essentially selfish stated reasons. Potter could cope with people wanting to use or learn from him. It was compassion he dreaded.

_Because he thinks it was compassion that made him abuse Draco. Draco’s compassion in staying with him, in not giving up and leaving when he should have._

Once Severus worked a little harder at seeing the world from Potter’s twisted perspective, it was not hard to comprehend.

Severus was still going to break him of it. Because someone who could feel this much compassion for a man he had once known as an enemy, who had the skill to craft this kind of enchantment, and the humility to attribute all his best ideas to someone else, and the cleverness to figure out the kinds of magic he had so far…

 _Does Draco realize what a treasure he discarded_?

*

Harry limped heavily after Snape as they rounded the far corner of the gardens. He couldn’t help but watch the Manor’s windows that pointed towards this part of the grounds, but didn’t see anyone at them, thank Merlin. It would be embarrassing if he came across as this weak in front of Draco.

Snape took his arm to Apparate when they reached the end of the long crushed stone driveway. Harry shut his eyes and tried not to reveal how much pain he was in and how grateful he was for the help in supporting his own weight. His magic had gone from causing him pain to actually wasting his muscles, and he could _feel_ it.

He did manage to stand on his own when Snape let him go in the middle of a dusky little room with heavy drapes on the windows, but he was glad for the lack of light. He knew he was sweating and probably losing color in his eyes.

“Merlin, Potter.”

Harry still managed to shy back from the vial of potion that Snape held out to him. “You said you were going to call me by my first name.” If Snape broke one promise, who knew but that he might break others and poison Harry or let him sleep for so long that he messed up Astoria’s gift permanently?”

“ _Harry_. Forgive me for what comes out of my mouth in a moment of stress.”

“What stress?” Harry accepted and downed the potion, glad that his hand wasn’t shaking too hard to do it yet. Damn, it had been a long time since he’d been this bad. He wished Snape could have accepted the bloody gift and let him finish it. That would have eased a lot of the strain.

“The prospect of explaining to your friends that I let you collapse in my drawing room,” Snape muttered.

“Ron and Hermione understand the way I am. They wouldn’t blame you.”

“Amazingly, that does not lessen my desire to avoid a confrontation,” Snape said, with a sneer in the back of his voice. He insisted on taking Harry’s arm like he was an invalid and guiding him through the room, weaving around what seemed to be a score of little tables. _Probably a potions lab with ingredients that need to be protected from the sun,_ Harry thought. “In here.”

Harry stepped into what he thought would be a drawing room or maybe another storage area, and pulled up short at the sight of the immense bed in the middle of the floor. It was shaped almost like a sleigh, with high sides and a dipped middle, and covered in dark green sheets. “You put a Slytherin theme in your guest room?”

“This is _my_ room, Harry.” Snape shifted a hand into the middle of his back and pushed.

Harry sprawled into the middle of the bed, hissing as he knocked his knees against the bed’s wooden sides. Snape shrugged at him and hauled his legs around without so much as a by-your-leave, dropping them in the middle of the mattress. “Now rest.”

“Wait—it should be in your guest bedroom, so you can—”

“I have no need to use my bedroom in the middle of the day, as unlike some careless wizards, I do not _magically exhaust myself_ on a regular basis.” Snape waved his wand and some sort of ward Harry had never seen before sprang up from the sides of the bed, rising until it formed a dome overhead. Harry blinked at it, trying to figure out how Snape had created it. “Now rest.”

“I haven’t slept in someone else’s bed in years,” Harry told him. “I don’t know if I can go to sleep.”

“That potion will ensure you do.”

“I didn’t give you permission to force-feed me a sedative, _Severus_ —”

Fuck, his vision was already blurring and he reached out a hand to claw at the ward, but it flickered and repelled his fingers like warm ice. Snape chuckled. “I am the only one who can open that ward, and even I would need my wand to do it from the inside.”

Harry wanted to reply that he could just use his magical strength to rip it apart, but thoughts of how fatigued he was right now and how much work Snape had probably put into the ward made him hesitate, and the potion seized him. He rolled onto his side, hating how heavy his limbs were. This was the reason he never used sedative potions even when his body was crying out for a good night’s sleep.

“Why have you not slept in someone else’s bed?” Snape whispered, the words falling around Harry like fading musical notes.

It must have been the potion that made him answer, that and his resignation to the fact that he was going to sleep anyway. “I didn’t want to be unfaithful to Draco.”

“From what I understand, Mr. Malfoy was unfaithful to _you_ , and in any case your relationship is _ended_.”

“There are—some standards I still hold myself to—doesn’t matter what other people do—”

And then Harry was under. He really hoped there weren’t any other words he’d said that he couldn’t remember. He was going to regret those enough when he woke up.

*

Severus stared in silence at the sprawled Potter in the middle of his bed, a combination of words he had never thought he would speak _or_ think. He waited for the snores to begin, but they never did.

Someone under the influence of the sleeping draught he had given Potter almost always snored. That he didn’t indicated a dangerous level of exhaustion.

A potentially _mortal_ level of exhaustion.

Severus closed his hands into slow fists. He wanted to leave. He didn’t want to stand here gazing down at Potter. He wanted to go back to the Manor and set up some kind of protection for the gift Potter had created. He wouldn’t put it past Draco or Astoria to destroy it if they found it.

But he couldn’t move.

Potter breathed on, oblivious.

_There are some standards I hold myself to. It doesn’t matter what anyone else does._

Draco had long since begun to sleep with Astoria, even during the time that he was still sleeping with Potter, if Severus had the timeline right. And Potter still considered it “cheating” if he slept with someone even now, years after Draco had ended things.

_Probably because he’s in love with Draco and would never consider sleeping with someone he’s not in love with._

With a harsh sound, Severus turned and swept out of the room. He Apparated back to the Manor and strode to the portion of the gardens where Potter had left the potions stand. He could feel his mood trembling as he walked, as brittle as glass. He knew it would shatter if someone spoke to him wrongly.

And if the stand was damaged…

But the stand waited as it had been, and no signs that anyone had been near it, not even house-elves. Severus cast the spells that would make it vanish to the sight of anyone but himself, then hesitated, and worked an exception into the spells.

Potter could hardly finish the gift if he couldn’t see it or touch it to find it, after all.

Severus again stood still when that was done. He hated the feeling of staring blankly into space with no idea of what came next. He had the feelings that were churning inside him.

Potter was someone who would risk his own bloody _life_ to try and create a gift that he thought of as repaying a debt. That the gift was something Severus could use and that would respond exclusively to his own magic was a level of thoughtfulness that no one had ever reached when it came to him.

Potter thought he should be faithful because it was the right thing to do, no matter what Draco had done. Potter gave credit for his ideas to others because he hadn’t been the one to come up with _every_ aspect of them. Potter had powerful magic that he treated as a normal facet of his life, when every other wizard Severus could think of would have bragged about it or used it for his own personal gain.

Severus started. His hands had clenched so tightly that they were painful. He worked his fingers open and latched onto the thought that had come to him.

He could not comprehend why Draco would be willing to discard someone like that, or to bring him back to create a wedding gift and torture him that way. Again, he thought that Draco must be playing a game neither Severus nor Potter understood.

But if Draco _was_ willing to give up a powerful, generous, devoted lover…

There was no one except Potter himself to stand in the way if Severus decided to collect him.

Severus glanced at the potions stand again. If he had never seen this, if Potter had never created it, then perhaps he would have decided otherwise. But he thought of having someone like that devoted to _him_ instead, and covetousness or lust throbbed under his breastbone.

Yes. He would have to make more effort than he would ordinarily have committed to a goal like this, but then again, Potter had given that much effort for a casual gift.

What would he do if Severus could free him of the toils of an old bond and give him someone else to love?

Severus shivered to think of it.


	6. Awakening

Harry opened his eyes to pain in his stomach, pain in his head, and the most delicious smell. His stomach rumbled loudly. Harry grimaced. Probably both kinds of pain came down to the fact that he hadn’t eaten in what felt like eons.

“Wake up, _Harry_.”

His attention could still fly around quickly even when his body felt weak. Harry rolled over at once and found himself staring at Snape, who stood in the doorway of the bedroom with his eyes narrowed and his face blank. Harry felt his own face heat up. He’d been lying in Snape’s bed. He’d kicked him out of his own room.

“Sorry for that stunt with your gift,” Harry muttered, sitting up and running his hand through his hair. The shadows of late afternoon tilted through the window, which upset his stomach more than his hunger. He’d wasted an entire _day_ sleeping when he could have been working! There were vital measurements for the maze that he could only take in the daylight.

“Wipe that expression off your face. At the moment, you need to consider little other than threats to your life important.”

“What are you talking about? Did someone show up to threaten me?” Harry climbed slowly out of the bed, watching Snape as he did. The man’s face stayed in that blankness that was almost pleasant compared to his usual mood. “I didn’t think anybody except you knew where I was.”

“No. I mean that you were dying when I fed you that potion.”

Harry froze in an awkward position that made him teeter and almost sent him to the floor. “I was _not_ ,” he hissed.

“Yes, you were. I know the signs, Harry.” Snape gave no sign that saying Harry’s first name was foreign to him, which unnerved Harry more than anything else. “Usually, people taking that particular sleeping potion snore. You did not. That means deadly exhaustion. You would have died if I hadn’t forced you to rest.”

Harry gave a slow, tortured breath. He didn’t want to believe it, but on the other hand, that would be a weird thing for Snape to lie about. He glanced at Snape, whose face remained perfectly placid, and rubbed the side of his face.

“Then I suppose that I owe you another life-debt.”

“I will consider it repaid if you take a meal with me, refer to me as Severus, and tell me certain things I have been curious about.”

Harry hesitated. He remembered the last lunch they’d had and how much of a disaster it had been. But then again, they weren’t in public this time, and Snape still seemed calm, not snapping. That was probably about the best he was going to get.

“All right, Severus. I’ll tell you anything that’s not someone else’s secret.”

“I assume that anything about your relationship with Draco falls into the realm of Draco’s secrets, then? Or so you would think?”

Harry bared his teeth. “I would think that, yeah.”

Snape shrugged a little and turned away. “Come and have dinner with me,” he said over his shoulder, which made Harry cast another resentful glance at the shadows coming in through the windows. How could he have slept so bloody _late_? It just didn’t make sense, no matter how exhausted he had been.

Maybe Snape had drugged the potion with a stronger sedative than normal—

But then Harry remembered the way he’d worked on the potions storage stand last night until his cold water was lukewarm, and sighed. No, it was possible. He would still dispute the idea that he had come close to _dying_ because of mere magical exhaustion, but yes, he might have fatigued himself to dangerous limits.

And if that was true…

Then he owed Snape a life-debt, and just about everything in his head that didn’t belong to Draco.

*

Severus watched Harry as he took a seat on the other side of the table, moving carefully, like a man who had ice beneath his feet. Severus wasn’t sure if that came from continued tiredness or justifiable caution around someone who had tried to read his mind the last time they ate together.

It bothered Severus not to know.

He sat down across from Harry and pushed the Galleons he had saved for him yesterday across the table. Harry arched an eyebrow. “Paying me for my company now, Severus?”

“I paid for your lunch yesterday. You can take your money back. I know how much you need it.”

 _That_ brought a tide of blood funneling up Harry’s face, and he leaned forwards across the table a little. The air around him became charged with a sharp, lightning-like feel. Severus didn’t lick his lips because he had more dignity than that, but he wondered—if his magic was like this right after Harry had nearly died, what had it been like when he was with Draco, at full power, and not trying to hide so much of himself?

_How could Draco ever have given it up?_

“I don’t need charity from you.”

“You think a bit of money is anything next to the potion that saved your life? You’ve already taken charity from me. I think you should just accept it.”

Harry abruptly sat back in his chair, eyes narrowing. The fires that had for a moment blazed on his face sank back, low-burning but not dimmed. Harry reached out and picked up his fork without looking away from Severus.

“You want something,” Harry said. “I know that much. What I don’t understand is how reminding me what I owe you connects to all these secrets that you think I’m carrying around. Or making me have a meal with you.”

Severus smiled, in spite of this being exactly such an insolent remark as he once would have expected, and despised, from Harry Potter. “I asked you to do so. I paid for the lunch yesterday.” Yes, that reminder was worth it, if only to see the way Harry’s head rose as if he was a hound on the scent. “I don’t think that constitutes forcing you.”

Harry ate in silence for a few minutes, watching Severus more than his plate. Only partially because of that, Severus thought that he noticed more about how much Harry ate than Harry did. He practically inhaled the rare steak on his plate, and then reached for the crusty bread and the butter without seeming to notice that he’d already eaten two pieces.

Severus concealed his frown well, because right now showing it might do more harm than good. Those were the kinds of provisions that someone magically exhausted would indeed swallow like sweets.

_I didn’t even ask if he wanted the steak rare. But it doesn’t matter. He needs it._

“All right,” Harry said finally, sitting back and raising an eyebrow at the Galleons in the middle of the table, which he still hadn’t deigned to pick up. “Why don’t we trade? An answer for an answer. Because I still have no idea why you’re doing this, and I don’t think you’d trade me willingly.”

` “As long as you will accept that ‘I don’t know’ might be the answer for a few of those questions.”

Harry blinked and his lips pursed for a moment; then he nodded and leaned forwards. “Why did you think I was almost dead?”

“I told you. Because of your reaction to the sleeping potion.”

"But why did you even _suspect_ that? You know something about the magic I've handled in the past and emerged fine from. What was different about this?"

"I suspect you have no idea how you looked," Severus said. That was honesty; Harry could not have an idea of it, or he would not have been as modest and uncomfortable when someone praised him. "Your skin was pale, your magic whined around you--"

"What the fuck does _that_ mean?"

"It means that your magic usually has a subtle buzzing. This was more like a whine, a mosquito's noise." Severus tilted his head. In reality, that sound wasn't something he had noticed until its absence had manifested when Harry fell asleep, but he had no inclination to tell the complete truth. "I think I've answered more than enough about this question."

Harry glared, but his hands reached out as if he didn't even notice what they were doing and dropped more berry compote on his plate. "Fine. Your turn."

"Why do you not see your achievements as remarkable?"

Harry blinked, but answered at once, even as he also reached for more bread. "Because I've only done the grunt work to get them to where they are. Learning how to get an impression of someone's magic from an object they've touched, for example. Other people figured out the theory on that. I was just the one who made it reality."

Severus let Harry see his rolled eyes. "And you don't think _making it real_ is worthy any celebration?"

"That part was easy compared to the theory, though. My turn. Why do you care about someone celebrating me?"

Severus nodded slowly and leaned back. That was a more complex question than he thought he could answer honestly. "Well. Part of it is because you are achieving things I have literally never seen anyone achieve before. And part of it is because you lied to me about who discovered how to improve the Draught of Peace's potency."

"I never _lied_."

"I questioned Draco about why he had never let on about these improvements to me. He said he had never discovered them." Severus made his voice softer. "When the man you credited with the improvements denies them himself--"

"He's just modest. Of course he would. And reminding him about the Draught of Peace probably brought up painful memories for him." Harry flattened his hands on the table and, to Severus's displeasure, abandoned the piece of bread smeared with compote that he'd been about to eat. "My turn--"

"It is not."

Harry paused, then said, "Fine. Ask your question."

No better weapon than the same question turned back. Severus let his eyebrows rise. "I doubt all your weapons and gifts and potions are based on theories that Draco created. Why do you think that your efforts are _not_ worthy of celebration?"

"I've already told you."

"Because they are easy. But do you think everything you do is on that same level? Do you think the potions stand you made for me is an easy task that anyone can do?"

Harry paused. Severus leaned forwards a little, attention more focused than he liked. But he doubted Harry would figure out the real impetus behind the question, not when he was so ignorant of everything about himself that someone else might value.

_That will, in the end, be my real challenge._

*

 _What does he_ want?

No matter how Harry thought about it, it didn't make sense. Snape was Draco's friend, or mentor, or whatever it was. During one of the letters Draco had sent Harry about the gift for Astoria, he had mentioned that Snape frequently used the Manor library, the potions lab, the ingredient storage space, and other rooms. That spoke of an interest in Draco's well-being and marriage, but the questions he was asking Harry didn't sound like he valued Draco. Who asked their friend's abuser for a detailed conversation?

And Snape couldn't want Harry to take his gift back, or start charging more for it, when that would take away something that benefited him personally. He couldn't _want_ to pay for Harry's meals or share meals with him when he didn't like or trust Harry.

In the end, Snape was still waiting for an honest answer, so Harry had to say, "I don't think the potions stand or anything else I made is valueless. But it has less value coming from me than it would from someone else." He hastily continued before Snape could ask another question. "Why are you doing this when I thought you were mostly here to watch over me and ensure I didn't mess up Astoria's gift?"

"That is the reason Draco thinks I'm here, but it is hardly the only reason now. Why does it have less value coming from you than from someone else?"

Harry's hands were clenched so hard in front of him that they hurt. He tried to uncurl his fingers when he saw that--no need to give Snape more ammunition--but Snape's eyes flickered down to them. Harry left them where they were and said, "You're stepping into territory that covers other people's secrets."

"Very well." Snape leaned back and picked up a porcelain cup of what Harry thought was tea.

"I want to know what's the reason that you're really here, if not to protect Draco's investment."

"But I don't have to tell you, because you never answered my last question."

Harry stared at Snape in betrayed outrage. Snape didn't notice. From the smell coming from the cup, it was actually some kind of liquor and not tea. Harry's outrage flared higher when he realized that Snape trusted his own impulse control well enough to drink _alcohol_ around Harry and not lose his temper.

He leaned forwards again, and saw Snape's eyes turn to him. Harry swallowed what anger he'd been tempted to blurt out and lowered his voice. "I'll trade you the answer to what kind of person I am for the answer to my question."

"Accepted," Snape said instantly, which made Harry clench his fingers again. What _was_ the angle? "But because I am more trustworthy than you, you will go first."

God, Harry wanted to _punch_ someone for the first time in years--

And then he reminded himself of what those impulses had led to with Draco, and bowed his head, wincing. It made it easier to speak the truths he needed to. Now that he thought of it, Snape was probably the best person to confess them to. His friendship with Draco meant he wouldn't spread the truth like rumors or bring them up with Draco in a painful way.

"I abused Draco. Emotionally, by being emotionless sometimes and needy and clingy at others. I couldn't give him what he needed. Because he has a warmer heart than anyone suspects, he stayed with me and tried to fix me, even though he was sleeping with Astoria so that he could get what he needed. I never appreciated those efforts. I never looked beyond my own selfish needs to even figure _out_ that the sex wasn't good for him. What kind of person is so blind to their own partner? Draco thought he could heal me, but he finally figured out that my childhood and having had the Horcrux in me made me incapable of love."

It hurt, it still hurt, to say it like that, but Harry tried to think of it as the pain associated with lancing an abscess. It had to be said, had to be done, so that he could discover Snape's game and if he was playing one that would hurt Draco.

*

Severus stared at Harry, and knew that he must look gormless. Never once would he have thought that was what lay behind his earnest attempts to give Draco credit for his magic and his genius. And to know that he thought himself incapable of love...

"Anyway. I want to know." Harry had already tucked the emotions that had been smoldering in his face away, as if he was used to doing this. He raised an eyebrow in a fashion that should not have been as attractive as it was. "What's the reason that you're really here?"

"I am trying to understand what you and Draco are doing."

"Working on Astoria's gift," Harry said, his brow wrinkling up slowly. "Preparing to get married to Astoria."

"No. I did not mean that. I mean the strange dynamic between you." Perhaps it was simply the unsettling revelation he had already endured from Harry, but Severus found the words flowed more easily now. "Why do you give him _no_ blame for sleeping with someone else for years and take all the blame on yourself? Why do you see yourself as an abuser?"

"I already told you. I _did_ abuse him. The least I can do is be honest about it. There's nothing else I can do to heal the pain he's in."

Severus said nothing, but he kept his face bland with an intense effort. That didn't seem like the Harry Potter he had known. Well, perhaps it was like the man who had walked out to martyr himself at the end of the war.

But that had been for the good of many people beyond one partner who had cheated on him. The Harry Potter Severus had known had also valued loyalty to the point that he had only forgiven Severus for killing Albus when he knew it was out of hidden loyalty.

_There has to be something else here. Potions are unlikely, when I know none that can produce that effect and Draco has been in contact too infrequent with Harry to use them. I would also think mind control is unlikely when Harry could resist the Imperius Curse. But Legilimency?_

Severus nodded slightly. It would perhaps also explain the ruined shields he had seen in Harry's mind.

But he could hardly attempt to read Harry's mind again right now, given how little trust he had earned. He picked up his cup of Firewine and said simply, "Thank you for telling me."

"I'm not hard to figure out once you know what kind of person I really am." Harry gave him a faint, miserable smile. "But why do you think something is going on with Draco?"

Severus sipped the rest of the Firewine in the cup, put it down, and said, "Because I cannot see Draco tolerating the company of someone who had actually abused him no matter how magnificent a gift he wished to create for his future wife."

Harry paused. Then he said, "I know that this is part of my penance."

" _Penance_?"

"I mean--I have to do _something_ to make up for what I did! I donated a lot of money to various organizations that support people who are victims like Draco was, mostly Muggle ones, but that's not enough! How _can_ it be enough when Draco is still suffering?"

"Do you know he is?"

"He told me he was!"

Severus shook his head. "Then that makes it stranger that he would want you near and doing this, not more understandable."

Harry stood up, glaring. "I know that perhaps you don't understand this," he hissed, "since you probably put all your guilt behind you with the war, but there's such a thing as _atonement._ "

"You're right. I would understand nothing about that, of course."

Harry flushed and closed his eyes tightly. Severus watched him without moving. He would manipulate Harry with guilt and his own awareness of Severus's past if necessary. He would have a certain level of _knowledge_ achieved before they parted today.

"You're right, that wasn't fair. Sorry." Harry opened his eyes and spoke more freely. "But as far as I'm concerned, what Draco wants, he gets. I don't get to question his motivations. I did enough of that when I found out about him and Astoria."

 _Ah._ That told Severus his first reaction had probably been normal, the shock of the betrayal cutting through whatever explanations Draco had tried to offer. Or perhaps the Legilimency that Draco had already tried to put in place? It would be interesting to know if Harry's reactions had changed before or after that discovery.

Harry would not--most likely _could_ not--offer him information on that point. Which meant Severus would have to speak to Weasley and Granger.

"Why are you smiling?"

Severus glanced up. "Simply that you have explained the situation to my satisfaction. And I will not mention what you told me to Draco." It would do no good, he knew. Draco would either lie or was as invested in his own bizarre perspective as Harry was and would speak a twisted truth.

Harry sighed and bowed his head. "Thanks. Sorry for the strangeness over this, but--I never expected to owe someone else a life-debt and have to almost betray Draco to pay it. Thanks again for saving my life." He picked up the piece of bread smeared with berry compote and walked towards the Floo.

"And you will neglect the basic courtesies?"

Harry's body seemed one whole wince. "Good night, Severus."

"Good night, Harry."

Severus waited until he had disappeared through the flames to let his expression change. Yes, he had learned some of the truth, but Draco's motivations were still mysterious, and unlike Harry, Severus had no compulsion not to question them.

And what he had learned tonight had not put him off, as exasperating as it had been. Someone who could be that devoted to another person, to defend them years after the fact...

_I want to change him, but not so much that he would become a different person. I will simply give him a better goal to direct those energies towards._


	7. Undesirable Sights

 

“Professor Snape. What are you doing here?”

“I told you before, Ron, he said that he wanted to come over to discuss Harry.” Granger bustled up behind her husband, taking the door from him and motioning Severus inside with a wave of her hand. “Welcome, sir. Can I get you something to eat or drink? Tea?”

Severus sneered at Weasley and walked past him, studying the interior of the house. It was small, but other than that, Granger and Weasley appeared to have done well for themselves. The furniture was antique, the colors on the walls quiet, and the ivy and flowers trained in trellises up on the walls included several rare species as well as those that were useful in brewing.

Severus averted his eyes from a pot filled with lilies of the valley and nodded slightly at Granger. “Tea, with milk.”

Granger went off to make it, while Weasley sat down on a leather couch and frankly goggled at Severus. Severus took a chair that was deep, soft, and done in blue that did not make his eyes flinch, and ignored him.

In the end, Granger brought a tray with tea and milk on it rather than trying to make it to his specifications, which was Severus’s preference in any case when dealing with those who did not know him well. He fixed the tea and watched as Granger sat down beside Weasley. The boy started to open his mouth, but she shut him down with a fierce shake of his head.

 _I suppose that I must account him a man, now_. But for all that he was taller than Harry, Weasley did not project that air of maturity Severus was learning to associate with his—

 _Project? Lover-to-be?_ Severus concealed his smile behind the teacup. He was fairly sure it would unnerve Granger and Weasley both.

“What did you need to talk to us about, concerning Harry?” Granger asked him. Her voice and posture were relaxed, but Severus took no particular comfort from that. He had seen how she could bristle in defense of what she thought was right, let alone a friend.

“I want to know how much you know concerning his relationship with Draco Malfoy.”

Weasley and Granger exchanged silent glances. Granger finally nodded, but it was Weasley who took up the tale. “Harry told us that he’d abused Malfoy. I said that was bollocks, but he said it was—it was true.” Weasley hesitated. “I’ve never seen Harry that adamant about anything, including saying Voldemort was back when we were still in school.”

Severus narrowed his eyes. _Here, this is the first trace of the trail_. “Describe his demeanor when he said that.”

“He was staring straight at me,” Weasley said at once. “Not shouting, but his hands were clenched and he—he acted like he was about to punch me if I didn’t agree. Of course I didn’t agree! I tried to tell him that he needed his head examined, but he told me that everyone else would just blame Malfoy because he used to be a Death Eater. He said he was the only one who knew the truth.”

“Did he ever go to see a Mind-Healer? After the war or after the relationship?”

Granger shook her head and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “First Harry didn’t want to, because he thought any Mind-Healer he saw would expose his secrets for money. Then he said he didn’t have time, what with participating in Auror training and getting his own business off the ground later.”

“Then he said that he wouldn’t because any Mind-Healer would just blame Malfoy.” Weasley took a slow, deep breath. “I told him Hermione and I blamed Malfoy, too. He didn’t talk to us for a month.”

Severus paused. That was something he had not anticipated. “Because you questioned his guilt?”

“Because we made it clear that we disliked Malfoy,” Granger whispered. She reached out and took a cup of tea from the tray, staring into it as if she intended to Divine the truth. “That was what he told us when he finally reached back out. That we disliked Draco, and he couldn’t be with people who disliked the man he was in love with.”

Severus frowned into the teacup he still held. He had assumed that perhaps Draco had struck Harry with a Legilimency compulsion, but he knew none that could focus on a person to that extent. Legilimency compulsions were supposed to make their victims take certain, limited types of actions. Draco might have instructed Harry to lie about their relationship, or to defend him, or to leave his friends forever, but silence for a month and reconciliation following that were beyond the scope of such compulsions.

_Perhaps it was a potion after all._

“And what have you talked to him of since?” he asked, looking up and from one face to another.

Granger shook her head. “Nothing about Malfoy. Now and then I’ve told him that he should see a Mind-Healer for another reason, but he brushes me off. And he won’t talk to us about this wedding gift that he’s making for them at _all_.”

That was one area where he had an advantage, then, Severus decided. Harry thought that Severus’s friendship with Draco was reason enough not to strike back as hard as he had with his friends. “I agree with you.”

Weasley choked on his tea. Granger patted his back, but kept her narrowed eyes on Severus. “With all due respect, sir, why?”

Severus grimaced. “Because I do not yet know what Mr. Malfoy did to Mr. Potter, but I can see the edges of it, and it is _wrong_. I also tire of hearing Mr. Potter put down his work and attribute all his accomplishments to Mr. Malfoy.”

“Bloody hell, he’s still doing that?” Weasley sloshed tea over the sides of his cup as he lowered it. “I told him and bloody _told_ him that no one wanted to hear that, and Malfoy wasn’t all that clever anyway, but he just told me that that came from my prejudices—”

Severus inclined his head. “He has said something similar to me, if not in the same words.”

“So there’s something more going on than just wanting to leave the past in the past or defend Malfoy because they dated. Isn’t there, sir?”

“I believe so. But I would like to see your memories so that I can be sure. It may be that something Potter revealed in them would make the matter clearer to me.”

Granger and Weasley exchanged glances. Then Granger said, “I’m sorry, sir, but we’d have to talk to Harry about that. And you already know that he would probably say no, because he doesn’t want anyone prying.”

“Not if you presented it as a method to convince me and help me to move past my ‘prying.’”

Another hesitation. “Now you’re asking us to lie to our best friend.”

“He is not your best friend,” Severus said, and had never been so glad for his ability to make people flinch from his words. “He is a shadow, a _shell_ , of the man that he used to be. He will never grow or change until I can get to the bottom of this.”

“But why does it have to be you?” Weasley subdued his voice a little when Severus glanced at him, but his glare was still a frozen fire. “You’ve always hated him. Just a little suspicious that you suddenly come out of nowhere and want to _help_ him.”

“I want to help him for the sake of solving this mystery. And for not hearing another inane defense of Mr. Malfoy and another attempt to claim that his skill is not remarkable again. I might have to spend months in his company while he works on this wedding gift. I am doing this to preserve my own sanity.”

Weasley settled back against the couch as if he’d swallowed that, but Granger was studying him with a far shrewder gaze. Severus stared back, undaunted. She ought to realize that he was the best chance for Harry to emerge from his shell, that after two years he would not do it on his own.

“All right,” Granger said.

“Hermione! We can’t just do this without asking Harry!”

“We can if we know what he’d say and that it wouldn’t change anything. Don’t put any of your own memories in the Pensieve if you’d rather,” Granger added when Weasley opened his mouth to object again. “I’m probably a closer observer than you are, anyway.”

“I want to help Harry,” Weasley muttered, and Granger nodded as she put her teacup aside and floated a Pensieve into the room that was marked with swirling patterns of silver and white.

 _Granger knows somewhat about how to manipulate her husband_ , Severus thought, and then put the thought aside until he needed it again, which seemed unlikely. He would not reject any useful weapon, but there _were_ things he preferred not to contemplate.

Granger drew wisp after wisp of memory out of her head, until the bowl brimmed with silvery liquid. She placed it on the table between them and said in a neutral voice, “Here you are, sir. I want you to promise that you’re going to use them to help Harry and not for anything else.”

“I will not swear a vow.”

“I want your promise.”

Severus traded silent stares with Granger until he decided that she meant what she said and, for some ridiculous reason, was willing to trust him if he was bound by a promise only. He said, “I promise that I will not use anything I see here to harm Mr. Potter,” and dove into the waiting memories.

*

“Mr. Harry Potter is to be coming to the house, yes. Those were Tibby’s orders.”

Harry frowned warily at the house-elf as he stood up from his examination of the reflecting pool that he’d have to incorporate into the maze. He remembered Tibby from his own time as Draco’s lover, and the elf had never been fond of him. Harry didn’t know why he would get an invitation now. “Are you _sure_?”

“Tibby is being sure.” The house-elf frowned at him and then turned and walked towards the house while Harry was still trying to understand that.

Harry sighed and followed her. Maybe Astoria wanted to talk to him about her wedding gift, and didn’t feel like coming out into the sun to do it. Tibby hadn’t said who’d given her the order. It could have been Astoria. Probably the elves would obey her as Draco’s wife-to-be.

But it might be Draco. They might be in a room alone. He might raise a cool eyebrow at Harry and say—

Harry ruthlessly killed that fantasy. He would never be alone with Draco again. Why would Draco _want_ to be alone with him? Harry had abused him. For his own protection, Draco would make sure to avoid all forced proximity.

Tibby led Harry through a pair of French windows covered in panes of glass that sparkled as if they were made of air, and through fine room after fine room. Harry only noticed the fineness of the furniture and the decorations out of the corner of his eye, though. His pulse was too busy speeding in his ears like a rabbit’s.

_I’m going to see Draco again._

Tibby hesitated outside a door that looked as if it was made of cherry wood, which was unusual enough that it distracted Harry from his inner whirlwind. “I’m supposed to go in there?” he asked the elf.

“Yes.” Tibby stepped back, studying the door as if it was a gaping maw instead. Harry frowned, but he couldn’t see any wards or spells, and when he turned the knob, nothing magical leaped out and bit him.

Something else did, instead.

He heard, before the door swung open all the way to give him a view of the inside of the room, Astoria’s low voice. “Draco, I’m not comfortable with this…”

Draco said something, but it sounded muffled, as if he was eating or drinking. Then the door finished swinging open all the way.

Astoria stood against the wall, naked, her arms splayed out as if to keep herself from slipping down. Draco was on his knees in front of her, his mouth buried beneath her legs.

The way Harry had seen them the day he came home and found out Draco was sleeping with Astoria and had been for three years.

Harry stumbled back, his head full of white and raging noise. Starbursts flashed across his vision, and his hands flailed in the air and caught nothing. His breathing was so loud and noisy that he lost track of where Draco and Astoria were and what they were doing behind the mask of rushing air.

Things shifted and broke in his mind, and he felt as if he was falling down the kind of hole that would close in on him and fall on his head and bury him and he would never emerge alive again—

“What are you doing here, Potter?”

The voice snatched him back to reality, and Harry blinked dazed eyes at what was in front of him, still crossed by what looked like fractured lines of silver lightning. Draco’s face slowly emerged. He’d stood up from where he’d been kneeling in front of Astoria, and was watching Harry with contempt so deep on his face that Harry flinched from it.

“I’m sorry.” Harry hated the croak of his voice, the shallowness at the base of his throat. He turned away, because Astoria was wrapping herself in a cloak and Harry didn’t want to stare at her. “Tibby said that I should come to the house.”

“I strongly doubt that she said any such thing.” Draco snapped his fingers, or Harry thought he did. The sound still seemed to come from underwater, and he flinched from that, too. “Tibby!”

The elf appeared between Harry and Draco, staring back and forth. “Yes, Master Draco?”

“Did you tell Potter to come to the house? Did you have orders to?”

“No, Master Draco! He barged right past Tibby!”

“ _Really_ , Potter,” Draco said, and his eyebrows crept up higher and higher, while his mouth curved in an intense expression that wasn’t a smile.

Harry felt as if he was falling from a great height again. Was he going mad? Had he gone mad? He didn’t know. He felt as he had when he realized for the first time that he’d been abusing Draco for years and never even known it. He felt the swarming unconsciousness coming for him, and the only thing that occurred to him was that he couldn’t faint in the house and make himself a burden to Draco.

“Sorry,” he blurted, and curled his fingers around a marble in his pocket. He always carried a Porkety, just in case one of his experiments went wrong and he had to get out of the way quickly.

Now, although it was a mercy he didn’t deserve, it struck like fire and carried him away from the condemnation in Draco’s eyes and the sight of Astoria shivering inside a cloak, her head bowed, injured by his gaze.

*

Severus found himself in the same sitting room he’d just been in with Granger and Weasley, but his attention settled at once on the figure huddled on the couch. It was Harry, yes, but so white-faced that he looked as if he had risen from a bed for the first time in months after a long bout of illness. Severus narrowed his eyes and walked closer.

Yes, Harry was pale to the point that his face made Severus ache. And he looked at Weasley and Granger as if they were holding out a healing potion he had to refuse.

“Don’t you understand, Harry?” Weasley was saying. His face was as red as though it had swallowed all the color that should have belonged to Harry’s, and his hands were waving around. “Malfoy is the one who abused you by sleeping with other people! Or just the one person, I have no idea But _he’s_ the abuser, not you! You’re not the one who has anything to be ashamed of! You couldn’t abuse anyone! You’d kill yourself first!”

“Ron!” Granger hissed, at the same moment as Harry said, in a flat voice, “I did consider it.”

“What?” Severus breathed, but of course, no one in the room at the moment could hear him.

“You can’t mean that.” Granger sounded heartbroken, but when she stepped forwards and put a hand on Potter’s arm, he shook it a little and forced her grasp off.

“Yes, I did mean that. If I don’t even realize that I’m abusing someone I’ve loved, and I don’t realize I’ve done it for years, who knows how many other people I might hurt?”

“You _weren’t_ —”

Granger was the one who intervened with what Severus mentally labeled the more practical suggestion. “Okay, Harry, say that happened.” Severus could see her practically choking on the words, but still she spoke them. “What you should do in that case is see a Mind-Healer, so you can become aware of the behavior. And what surrounds the behavior, and what might make you act that way.”

Harry stared at her with vague, empty eyes. Severus moved around in front of the boy so that he could see them for himself, and shuddered when he saw how much depth they lacked.

_Yes, they were right to worry about him. And to urge him to visit a Mind-Healer. I do not know how Draco did this, but I’m sure now that it was something to do with Harry’s mind itself._

“I know what a Mind-Healer would do,” Harry said, and then sat silent.

Weasley and Granger exchanged glances. Granger finally asked, “Heal you?”

“They would blame Draco.” Harry smiled, but the motion of his lips had nothing to do with the staring horror in his eyes. “I don’t want them to do that. They would say that he abused me and tried to hurt me, and that’s not true. He was trying to fix me the best he knew how.”

“That’s _not true_ ,” Granger said, sounding as if the words had been driven out of her by the Imperius Curse. “It’s just not true, Harry. Malfoy is an idiot, and he doesn’t know what he lost. If he didn’t love you or he th-thought you couldn’t love other people, he should have just said so and left you! And of course you can love other people! You died to save the world out of love, and you came back because of love—”

Harry stood and walked out of the room. A weeping Granger ran after him, but Severus did not need to follow her or hear the slam of the door to know that that moment was the beginning of the month-long period when Harry hadn’t spoken to his best friends.

Severus watched as the memory shifted, and Granger was standing beside Harry in a small green space that must be the garden of the house she and Weasley shared together.

“Are you all right, Harry?” Granger spoke without looking at Harry, keeping her head down and tearing at a few blades of grass she clutched.

“I’m fine,” Harry said. He looked far from it; he looked as though someone had been trying to pull out his intestines with a fishhook, in Severus’s opinion. But he wasn’t going to yield more than that.

“You just—you know that you can always come to me and Ron if you need anything.”

“And if I said that I needed absolution?”

“I’d try to give it to you.”

Harry gave Granger a faint smile. “Thank you. But actually, I found my absolution already.”

“Oh?” Granger sounded as though she was trying to keep both hope and judgment out of her voice, a balancing act that Severus knew well. Who knew what Harry’s idea of absolution would be, when he had such a twisted view of Draco’s innocence and his own guilt?

“Yes. I found charities that help people like Draco, victims of emotional abuse, and I donated my money to them.”

Granger hesitated. Then she said, “That’s good, of course, Harry. But you mean that you donated a lot of your money, right?”

“Of course I do. Most of it. I don’t have the fortune I used to, anymore. But at least it might mean that I’m _helping_ people like Draco for once instead of turning against them.”

Severus hissed under his breath, understanding much better now why Harry had made the gestures with Galleons that he had. _The fool. The idiot. This only shows how much his brain has twisted and warped._

Granger made a motion with her hand across her eyes that Severus knew meant her thoughts echoed his, but her voice was remarkably steady as she said, “That could be a good thing, Harry. I hope it is. But what are you going to live on?”

“Oh, I kept enough to _live_ on,” Harry said, in a tone that implied he thought Granger to be the fool for worrying about it. “But I gave enough away that I won’t be a self-indulgent, spoiled little rich boy anymore.”

“Oh,” Granger breathed.

She said nothing. Harry darted a glance at her and frowned. “You don’t agree with me.”

“I think,” Granger said carefully, “that what you think is sufficient to live on and what I would think is sufficient are probably different.”

Harry relaxed enough to smile. “True. But I have a business, and I can support myself. It’s only right that I work, Hermione. I wasn’t _really_ working these past three years, you know. Not working on my relationship with Draco the way I should have been. Otherwise I would have noticed that I wasn’t giving Draco what he needed long before this.”

Severus pinched the bridge of his nose. Yes, although he did not yet know what kind of Legilimency attack Draco could have created that would have achieved it, he was sure that this was evidence that Draco had entered Harry’s mind and literally changed it.

_Somehow._

“All right, Harry. If that’s what you need to feel that you’ve atoned, then I’ll agree with you.”

Harry smiled and said something else, but the memory was dissolving, and Severus saw no need to linger. He could understand much better now why Granger and Weasley had been ineffective in freeing Harry from his obsessive guilt. They were afraid of scaring Harry away again, making him feel as though he had nothing to live for and not being there to save him.

But Severus would not allow fear to drive him away from Harry’s side or impose a month of silence between them. He had every intention of seeking out and healing the cause of Harry’s foolishness.

_Because it is madness to allow this to continue. Because Draco should not have done what he did._

_Because I do not want to see him so broken._

*

Harry lay on his bed and stared up at the ceiling. There were still white bursts of light cutting across his vision, but they had faded gradually throughout the last hour. He was going to be okay. He was going to be all right. He repeated that to himself over and over.

He had to worry about going mad and hearing people, or house-elves, say things they had never said, that was true. But this was where he would let Snape actually help, instead of ask silly questions and make unhelpful comments. There had to be a potion that would help him distinguish reality from nonsense. There had to be. He hoped Snape would know how to brew it.

Slowly, Harry rose back to his feet. He took a deep breath. He still had to return to Malfoy Manor for his afternoon session of working on Astoria’s gift.

But he made a few promises to himself. First, he wouldn’t enter the Manor again no matter what he thought he heard someone say to him, or who invited him.

Second, he would make the gift even more extravagant than he’d been planning on, as a way of apologizing to Astoria for walking in on them.

Third, he would come up with some way to craft an apology for Draco. He didn’t know how yet, but he would. What he had done was inexcusable.


End file.
